The Trump administration is considering possible sanctions on Venezuela’s vital energy sector, including state oil company PDVSA, senior White House officials said, in what would be a major escalation of U.S. efforts to pressure the country’s embattled leftist government amid a crackdown on the opposition.

The idea of striking at the core of Venezuela’s economy, which relies on oil for about 95 percent of export revenues, has been discussed at high levels of the administration as part of a wide-ranging review of U.S. options, but officials said it remains under debate and action is not imminent.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the United States could hit PDVSA as part of a “sectoral” sanctions package that would take aim at the OPEC nation’s entire energy industry for the first time.

Complicating factors

But they made clear the administration is moving cautiously, mindful that if such an unprecedented step is taken it could deepen the country’s economic and social crisis, in which millions suffer food shortages and soaring inflation. Two months of anti-government unrest has left more than 60 people dead.

Another complicating factor would be the potential impact on oil shipments to the United States. Venezuela is the third largest oil supplier for the U.S. after Canada and Saudi Arabia. It accounted for 8 percent of U.S. oil imports in March, according to U.S. government figures.

“It’s being considered,” one of the officials told Reuters, saying aides to President Donald Trump have been tasked to have a recommendation on oil sector sanctions ready if needed. “I don’t think we’re at a point to make a decision on it. But all options are on the table. We want to see the bad actors held to account.”

The U.S. deliberations on new sanctions come against the backdrop of the worst protests faced yet by socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who critics accuse of human rights abuses in a clampdown on the opposition.

Since Trump took office in January, he has stepped up targeted sanctions on Venezuela, including on the vice president, the chief judge and seven other Supreme Court justices. He has pressed the Organization of American States to do more to help resolve the crisis.

While Trump has taken a more active approach to Venezuela than his predecessor Barack Obama, he has so far stopped short of drastic economic moves that could hurt the Venezuelan people and give Maduro ammunition to accuse Washington of meddling.

The two administration officials said the United States is also prepared to impose further sanctions on senior officials it accuses of corruption, drug trafficking ties and involvement in what critics see as a campaign of political repression aimed at consolidating Maduro’s rule.

Oil sanctions big step

But broad measures against the country’s vital oil sector, for which the United States is the biggest customer, would significantly ratchet up Washington’s response. The United States has imposed sectoral sanctions against Russia’s energy, banking and defense industries over Moscow’s involvement in Ukraine’s separatist conflict.

The officials declined to specify the mechanisms under consideration and said the timing of any decision would depend heavily on developments on the ground in Venezuela.

Possibilities could include a blanket ban on Venezuelan oil imports and preventing PDVSA from trading and doing business in the United States, which would have a severe impact on PDVSA’s U.S. refining subsidiary Citgo.

A more modest approach, however, could be to bar PDVSA only from bidding on U.S. government contracts, as the Obama administration did in 2011 to punish the company for doing business with Iran. Those limited sanctions were rolled back after the 2015 international nuclear deal with Tehran.

The Venezuelan government and PDVSA did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. officials recognize, however, that oil sanctions on Venezuela could exacerbate the suffering of the Venezuelan people without any guarantee of success against Maduro, who accuses Washington and Venezuelan opposition of fomenting an attempted coup.

Given the potential for regional spillover, any decision on oil sanctions would require consultation with Venezuela’s neighbors, the officials said.

“The concern we have is that it will be a very serious escalation,” one official said. “We’d have to be prepared to deal with the humanitarian consequences of essentially collapsing the government.”
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From: MeNeedIt

SpaceX launched its first recycled cargo ship to the International Space Station on Saturday, another milestone in its bid to drive down flight costs.

After a two-day delay caused by thunderstorms, the unmanned Falcon rocket blasted off carrying a Dragon capsule that made a station delivery nearly three years ago. When this refurbished Dragon reaches the orbiting lab on Monday, it will be the first returning craft since NASA’s now-retired shuttles.

The first-stage booster flown Saturday afternoon was brand-new, and as is now the custom, returned to Cape Canaveral following liftoff for a successful vertical touchdown. “The Falcon has landed,” SpaceX Mission Control declared from company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and a cheer went up.

Reusable booster

The plan is to launch the booster again, instead of junking it in the ocean as so many other rocket makers do. Just two months ago, SpaceX launched its first recycled booster on a satellite mission. Another flight featuring a reused booster is coming up later this month.

This Dragon capsule, meanwhile, came back for take two following a few modifications and much testing. Shortly before liftoff, a SpaceX vice president, Hans Koenigsmann, called the Dragon reflight “a pretty big deal.”

It’s all part of the company’s quest, Koenigsmann said, to lower the cost of access to space through reusability.

The Dragon soaring Saturday has the same hull and most of the same parts from its 2014 flight. SpaceX installed a new heat shield and parachutes, among a few other things, for the trip back to Earth at flight’s end. The Dragon is the only supply ship capable of surviving re-entry; all the others burn up in the atmosphere. NASA’s other supplier, Orbital ATK, will see its cargo carrier depart the 250-mile-high complex on Sunday, six weeks after arriving.

Besides the usual supplies, the 6,000-pound shipment includes mice and flies for research, a new kind of roll-up solar panel and a neutron star detector.

Similar risk

For now, SpaceX said savings are minimal because of all the inspections and tests performed on the already flown parts. NASA’s space station program manager, Kirk Shireman, told reporters earlier in the week that SpaceX did a thorough job recertifying the Dragon and that the risk is not substantially more than if this were a capsule straight off the factory floor. He said the entire industry is interested in “this whole notion of reuse,” first realized with the space shuttles.

It was the 100th launch from NASA’s hallowed Launch Complex 39A, the departure point for the Apollo moon shots as well as dozens of shuttle missions, including the last one in 2011. SpaceX now leases the pad from NASA; the company’s first launch from there was in February.

SpaceX has been hauling station supplies for NASA for five years, both up and down. This is the company’s 11th mission under a NASA contract. The company’s next step is to deliver astronauts using modified Dragons. That could occur as early as next year.

Until SpaceX and Boeing start transporting crews, astronauts will continue to ride Russian rockets. On Friday, a Russian and Frenchman returned from the space station in their Soyuz capsule, leaving two Americans and a Russian behind. The station was zooming over Oman in the Persian Gulf when the Falcon took flight.
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From: MeNeedIt

Fans of the Juventus team watching the Champions League soccer final rushed out of a Turin piazza in panic Saturday after witnesses reported being spooked by a loud sound.

At least one person was carried away on a stretcher, and ambulances and firefighters were at the scene.

Thousands of people had gathered at Piazza San Carlo to watch the match pitting Juventus against Real Madrid on giant TV screens. At a certain point, hundreds ran in a near-stampede from the square’s center. Witnesses reported hearing a loud sound that sparked the alarm.

Within minutes, dazed fans in Juve’s trademark black-and-white jerseys returned and milled about amid the broken bottles and garbage littering the cobblestones.

The ANSA news agency said it was a false alarm.

Real Madrid won 4-1 in the match, played in Cardiff, Wales.
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From: MeNeedIt

Rick Perry twice ran for president and appeared as a contestant on TV’s Dancing with the Stars.

But since becoming President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, Perry has kept a low profile and rarely has been seen publicly around Washington. Comedian Hasan Minhaj joked at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that Perry must be “sitting in a room full of plutonium waiting to become Spider-Man. That’s just my hunch.”

In truth, Perry has been busy — but far away from the capital.

He has toured Energy Department sites around the country, represented the Trump administration at a meeting in Italy and pledged to investigate a tunnel collapse at a radioactive waste storage site in Washington state.

Perry has visited a shuttered nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain and cautiously began a yearslong process to revive it.

Asia trip

On Thursday, Perry embarked on a nine-day trip to Asia, where he planned to check on the progress made since a 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to help decontaminate and decommission damaged nuclear reactors. Perry also was to represent the United States at a clean-energy meeting in Beijing.

The former Texas governor says he’s having the time of his life running an agency he once pledged to eliminate. Perry has emerged as a strong defender of the department’s work, especially the 17 national labs that conduct cutting-edge research on everything from national security to renewable energy.

“I’m telling you officially the coolest job I’ve ever had is being secretary of energy … and it’s because of these labs,” Perry, 67, told an audience last month at Idaho National Laboratory, one of several he has visited since taking office in March.

“If you work at a national lab … you are making a difference,” Perry said.

The energy chief soon will have a chance to back up those words when he and other officials head to Capitol Hill to defend a budget proposal that slashes funding for science, renewables and energy efficiency.

Paris accord

Perry probably will be asked to defend Trump’s decision to withdraw from the landmark Paris climate accord. Perry said Thursday that the U.S. remains committed to clean energy and that he was confident officials could “drive economic growth and protect the environment at the same time.”

The administration has called for cutting the Office of Science, which includes 10 national labs, by 17 percent. The proposed budget would reduce spending for renewable and nuclear energy, eliminate the popular Energy Star program to enhance efficiency and gut an agency that promotes research and development of advanced energy technologies.

Perry, who served 14 years as Texas governor, likened the spending plan to an opening offer that he expects to see significantly changed in Congress.

“I will remind you this is not my first rodeo when it comes to budgeting,” he said during a recent tour of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “Hopefully we will be able to make that argument to our friends in Congress — that what DOE is involved with plays a vital role, not only in the security of America but the economic well-being of the country as we go forward.”

Energy lobbyist Frank Maisano said Perry’s actions show instincts honed in his tenure as Texas’s longest-serving governor.

“He’s trying to find out what he needs to find out — hearing about these issues from the front lines,” Maisano said.

While Perry will never match the scientific expertise of his most recent predecessors at the Energy Department, nuclear physicists Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz, his political skills may offset that knowledge gap, Maisano said.

Renewable energy support

During his Oak Ridge visit, Perry pledged to be “a strong advocate” for Oak Ridge and other labs. He has spoken out in favor of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, noting that while he was governor, Texas maintained its traditional role as a top driller for oil and natural gas while emerging as the leading producer of wind power in the United States and a top 10 provider of solar power.

Abigail Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said she had “a very positive conversation” with Perry at a meeting in April.

“He was very interested in our technology and how it can be utilized,” she said in an interview.

Perry also “knew exactly where Texas was in solar installation,” Hopper said — No. 9 in the nation, compared with its top ranking among wind-producing states.

Hopper, a former Interior Department official under President Barack Obama, said she and Perry did not discuss her federal service — but did talk about how national labs can boost the solar industry.

“It was good to make that connection between the research and how it translates into the marketplace,” she said. “He gets it.”
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From: MeNeedIt

H1B visas were created to bring high-tech professionals from other countries to the US. The hub of high-tech innovation, Silicon Valley, has long benefited from the program. But the Trump administration has vowed to re-examine the program. In this report, narrated by Miguel Amaya, VOA’s Chu Wu talked to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs about the potential impact, at the opening of VOA’s new bureau there.
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From: MeNeedIt

Dozens of U.S. companies spoke out against President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. Analysts say the improving economic case for renewables has boosted support for green energy in the once-skeptical business community; but, as VOA’s Jim Randle reports, some coal companies supported the president’s action.
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From: MeNeedIt

One year ago today, Muhammad Ali — arguably the greatest and most unforgettable athlete of the 20th century — lost his decades-long fight with Parkinson’s disease, dying at age 74.

‘I am the greatest’

Originally named Cassius Clay, Ali was in Kentucky during an era of harsh segregation, and confronted its indignities from the start, carrying himself with confidence and pride despite the racist world around him.

He learned to box at the age of 12, motivated by the theft of his red Schwinn bike, which left the skinny youth humiliated — and determined.

‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’

From the start, Clay — who would later change his name to Muhammad Ali after joining the Nation of Islam — was driven, creating a punishing gym routine that he rarely deviated from.

He was a natural.

The young athlete possessed unmatched speed, agility and physical power. His signature was a kind of mental strength or attitude that he used to outwit his opponents.

Outside the ring, Ali was witty, charismatic, even vain (of his opponents, he would often say ‘He isn’t as pretty as me!”), and often spoke like hyped up poet:

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t. 

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning. And throw thunder in jail.

Although he had already made a name for himself, his big moment came in 1964, when he stepped into the ring for his first title fight against then heavyweight champ Sonny Liston. Ali taunted the champion mercilessly, once appearing unexpectedly at his home to goad him into the ring.

Ali instantly became a worldwide star after knocking out Liston in just six rounds. 

​Despite his brash charm, originality in the ring and stunning physical prowess, not everyone took to Ali.  Many publicly expressed their hatred.

By joining Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam and adopting a Muslim name, he alienated many Americans who were not ready to accept a black Muslim boxing star. 

“He threatened a sense of the racial order; he was, in his refusal to conform to any type, as destabilizing to many Americans. … He was, for many years, a radical figure for many Americans,”  wrote David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker Magazine and author of the 1998 biography “Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero.” ​

By 1967, Ali had won 29 title fights in six and a half years, an extraordinary record. But an unexpected turn of events was to keep the champ out of the ring for the next three years. 

Vietnam

When he refused to be inducted into the armed forces during the Vietnam War, the state boxing commission suspended him, stripping him of his title.  

Ali would not fight the Vietcong in Vietnam.

That move endeared him to many, African-Americans in particular, who watched as the heavyweight champion of the world courageously gave up his hard-won heavyweight boxing title in exchange for principles.

Ali returned to the ring in 1970, after a federal court upheld his petition for a state license.

He would triumph over and over again in the years to come: reclaiming his title in 1974 in a fight with Joe Frazier; the famed “Rumble in the Jungle” in what was then the country of Zaire, where he won a masterful fight against George Foreman; losing his title and winning it back; and, finally, losing it for the last time in 1980 to Larry Holmes.

He retired a year later. By then, the early effects of Parkinson’s disease on Ali’s body were clearly evident in his slurred speech.

As he grew increasingly more ill, he was rarely seen in public, living out the rest of his life quietly with his family in Kentucky and Arizona.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Kathy Griffin and her attorney have scheduled a news conference for Friday morning to discuss the fallout from the comedian posing with a likeness of President Donald Trump’s severed head.

Attorney Lisa Bloom says Griffin will discuss the photo and video she and celebrity photographer Tyler Shields posted on Tuesday. The images prompted CNN to fire Griffin from her decade-long gig hosting a New Year’s Eve special with Anderson Cooper.

Griffin apologized within hours of the images appearing online. They were met with swift and widespread condemnation.

Trump later tweeted that Griffin “should be ashamed of herself” for posting the images.

The 56-year-old comic has faced controversies before for her abrasive humor, but none as widespread as the one generated by Tuesday’s images.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The price of oil has fallen sharply as investors bet that President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement will increase the country’s oil and gas production.

The cost of a barrel of crude slumped 2.4 percent, or $1.18, to $47.18 in electronic trading in New York on Friday, hours after Trump said the U.S. would immediately stop implementing the Paris deal. He said his administration could try to renegotiate the existing agreement or try to create a new one that is more favorable to the U.S.

The deal would have required the U.S. to reduce polluting emissions by more than a quarter below 2005 levels by 2025, potentially limiting the growth of high-emissions industries like oil and gas production. Economists, however, say that the climate deal would likely help create about as many jobs in renewable energy as it might cost in polluting industries.

U.S. oil production has already been increasing in recent months since the price of crude came off lows last year, making expensive shale oil extraction more economically viable.

“Now that U.S. President Trump has announced that the U.S. will be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, it is expected that the U.S. will expand its oil production even more sharply,” said analysts at German bank Commerzbank.

The increase in U.S. production is neutralizing the efforts of the OPEC cartel and other major oil-producing nations, like Russia, to support prices by limiting their output. OPEC and 10 other countries led by Russia agreed last week to extend for nine months, to March, a production cut of 1.8 million barrels a day initially agreed on in November.

On Friday, the head of Russia’s state-controlled Rosneft oil giant said that that a rise in shale oil output in the U.S. would likely offset the effect from the OPEC and Russian production cuts.

Speaking at an economic forum in St.Petersburg, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin said that the OPEC and Russian cuts fall short of “systemic measures that would lead to long term stabilization.”

He said that thanks to increasing efficiency, U.S. shale oil producers would likely deliver an additional 1.5 million barrels of crude a day to the market in 2018.
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From: MeNeedIt

The heated debate over India’s cash ban continues, with critics saying it slowed an economy that was growing, while the government says economic momentum was barely affected.

Critics say the scrapping of 86 percent of the country’s currency last November cost India its status as the world’s fastest growing economy.

According to data released this week, from January to March, growth plunged to 6.1 percent – lower than China’s 6.9 percent growth in the same period.

Overall growth for the last financial year, which began in April 2016 and ended in March 2017, however, stood at 7.1 percent.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has tried to distance the disappointing economic numbers from the currency ban, citing other factors.

“There was some slowdown visible, given the global and domestic situation, even prior to demonetization in the last year,” he told reporters.

The slowdown affected almost all sectors of the economy, with farming, manufacturing and services all taking a hit. With people scrambling to get access to new notes, consumption slowed sharply, impacting both small shopkeepers and large businesses.

The government, however, is encouraged by forecasts that the economy is expected to recover swiftly on the back of monsoon rains, which are expected to be plentiful, and a slew of major reform measures.

As economists estimated growth this year will rebound to 7.4 percent, the government pointed out that India’s economy is still among the world’s top performers. Jaitley said given the global scenario, “7 to 8 percent growth, which at the moment is the Indian normal, is fairly reasonable and by global standards very good.”

There are widespread expectations of a major economic boost from India’s most ambitious tax reform action since independence – the launch of a nationwide tax that will replace a plethora of levies starting July 1.

The World Bank said this week the reform would lower the cost of doing business for firms and reduce logistics costs.

In the coming year, “we actually have very strong fundamentals of the Indian economy, GDP growth being up, exports have revived and there has been continued reform momentum,” said Frederico Gil Sander, a senior economist at the World Bank in New Delhi.

And while demonetization undoubtedly left its imprint on India by slowing down the economy, the government is optimistic there will be long-term gains because the move would help clean up an economy where many businesses and professionals evade taxes, resulting in the generation of what is known as “black money.”

“The message has gone loud and clear and it continues to this day that it is no longer safe to deal in cash,” said Jaitley.

Skeptics say only improved tax collections in the coming years will demonstrate whether that is true, or whether tax evasion remains a challenge in a country where cash transactions are the norm in large sectors of the economy.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Black Eyed Peas and Robbie Williams will join Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and other stars at a charity concert Sunday in Manchester, England.

Live Nation said Thursday that girl group Little Mix had also been added to the show being held in response to the Manchester bombing that took place at Grande’s concert in the city last week. Twenty-two people died at the show.

Katy Perry, Coldplay, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Take That and Niall Horan also will perform. The event, “One Love Manchester,” will take place at Emirates Old Trafford.

Tickets went on sale Thursday. Proceeds will go to an emergency fund set up by the city of Manchester and the British Red Cross.
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From: MeNeedIt

When General Motors CEO Mary Barra introduced the Chevrolet Bolt at the CES gadget show last year, she took a shot at Tesla.

Buyers can be confident because Chevy has 3,000 U.S. dealers to service the new electric vehicle, she said. The implication was that Tesla, with just 69 service centers nationwide, can make no such promise.

The uncharacteristic insult from Barra was designed to highlight the difference between 108-year-old GM and Tesla, a disruptive teenager. It also acknowledged a budding rivalry that could help determine whether Detroit or Silicon Valley sets the course for the future of the auto industry.

The tale of the tape favors GM. It has made billions in profits since returning to the public markets in 2010. GM got the Bolt, a $36,000 car that goes 238 miles per charge, to market before Tesla’s Model 3. Tesla, the 14-year-old company led by flamboyant CEO Elon Musk, has never posted an annual profit.

Yet, as both CEOs face shareholders for annual meetings Tuesday, it is Barra who must explain to skeptical investors why GM’s future is as bright as Tesla’s.

GM’s stock is trading around the $33 price of its initial public offering seven years ago. During that time, Tesla shares have soared more than tenfold to $335. Wall Street now values Tesla at about $55 billion, compared to around $50 billion for GM.

Despite efforts to paint themselves as technology companies, automakers can’t shake their giant, capital-intensive global manufacturing operations. The huge investment needed to build vehicles yields low profit margins compared with tech companies that make software or cell phones, says Michael Ramsey, an analyst with Gartner. GM’s net profit margin in 2016 was 5.7 percent. By comparison, Alphabet Inc., parent of Google, had a 22 percent margin.

Although it’s an automaker, Tesla started in the tech bucket and remains there in the eyes of investors and buyers, Ramsey says.

Tesla’s electric cars are the envy of the industry, and its semi-autonomous technology is among the most advanced on the road. Musk says Tesla’s California assembly plant – which used to be GM’s – will soon be among the most efficient in the world. And it’s branching into areas with potential for bigger returns, including solar panels, energy storage and trucking.

Tesla is absurdly overvalued if based on the past, but that’s irrelevant. A stock price represents risk-adjusted future cash flows,” Musk tweeted in April.

Still, Musk can’t risk any missteps as Tesla pivots from a niche manufacturer of 84,000 high-priced cars per year. The Model 3 sedan, Tesla’s first mainstream car, is due out later this year, but previous launches have been plagued with delays. Tesla has yet to prove it can build high-volume vehicles with quality and reliability, as GM does. Musk aims to make 500,000 vehicles per year in 2018; GM made more than 10 million cars and trucks last year.

GM, too, is stretching into new areas. Its Maven car-sharing service has 35,000 members in 17 North American cities, and it’s providing cars for ride-hailing services. GM is developing autonomous cars with Cruise Automation, a software company purchased last year. Its SuperCruise semi-autonomous driving system, due out this year, is designed to be safer than Tesla’s.

And GM isn’t the only automaker with a stagnant stock price. Of the seven best-selling carmakers in the U.S., only Toyota and Fiat Chrysler have seen significant growth in seven years. Ford, Honda and Hyundai all have lost value.

“Investors and the financial markets are much more interested in investing in the potential of what might be huge than in the reality of what’s already profitable and likely to remain so for years to come,” says Sam Abuelsamid, a senior analyst with Navigant Research.

Abuelsamid says GM could better trumpet its technology achievements. For instance, it scarcely markets the Bolt. By contrast, Musk builds hype with nightclub-like events for Tesla owners and Twitter banter with 8.8 million followers.

“The only way you can get people to perceive you in the same light as a company like Tesla is to demonstrate it,” Abuelsamid says.

Musk is crucial to Tesla’s success. The risk-taking billionaire founded PayPal and rocket company SpaceX before taking over Tesla. He espouses big ideas like Hyperloop high-speed transportation and colonizing Mars.

Barra, on the other hand, is a methodical engineer who rarely strays from script. She has only 29,500 Twitter followers. She’s a GM lifer who earned a company-paid MBA from Stanford; Musk left a Stanford graduate physics program after just two days to form a publishing startup.

“Mary is like a normal high-level performing executive,” Ramsey says. “Elon Musk is like an almost unrivaled superstar, even in comparison to Silicon Valley executives.”

Still, the big changes in the auto industry are in the early stages. Electric vehicles make up less than 1 percent of global auto sales and fully self-driving cars are years away. The economy can falter and company fortunes can shift. Already this year, sales in the U.S. and China are slowing, and GM pulled out of the European and Indian markets because they weren’t profitable.

GM knows the ups and downs of auto sales, but Tesla will have to learn to manage them. If the Model 3 is late and Tesla sales fall, its stock price could drop and reduce Tesla’s access to cheap capital, Ramsey says.

“I don’t think they’re completely immune to economic cycles,” he says. “That will be when we really know if Tesla can maintain this out-of-whack share value with their fundamentals.”
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From: MeNeedIt