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AP FACT CHECK: Trump takes credit for law named after McCain

President Donald Trump's posthumous slam on Sen. John McCain flips reality on its head when it comes to who gave veterans the option to see a private doctor at public expense.

"McCain didn't get the job done for our great vets," Trump said Wednesday. "I got it done."

Actually, McCain got it done.

Trump routinely takes full credit for enacting the Choice program, ignoring the fact that it was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014. This time, his boast came as part of a broad-brush denunciation of McCain , the senator from Arizona, Vietnam war naval aviator and tortured prisoner of war who died in August of brain cancer.

TRUMP: "The vets were on my side because I got the job done. I got Choice, and I got accountability. ... For many decades, they couldn't get it done. It was never done. I got it. Five months ago, I got it done. Choice." — remarks at an Army tank factory in Lima, Ohio .

THE FACTS: What Trump got done was an expansion of the program achieved by McCain and Sen. Bernie Sanders, most prominent among the lawmakers who advanced the legislation signed by Obama.

McCain was a co-sponsor of the 2014 legislation to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs following the scandal at VA's medical center in Phoenix, where some veterans died while waiting months for appointments for medical care. He was a key negotiator for the legislation establishing the Veterans Choice program, working with Sanders, the co-author of the bill. Sanders was then chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

McCain didn't rest after the law was enacted. He fought to expand the program and achieved that, too, in his last months.

Trump signed the expansion into law in May. It's named after three veterans who served in Congress.

One of them is McCain.

It's called the John S. McCain III, Daniel K. Akaka, and Samuel R. Johnson VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018.

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TRUMP: "Instead of waiting in line for two days, two weeks, two months, people waiting on line — they're not very sick, by the time they see a doctor, they are terminally ill — we give them Choice. If you have to wait for any extended period of time, you go outside, you go to a local doctor, we pay the bill, you get yourself better, go home to your family — and we got it passed. We got it done."

THE FACTS: As he does routinely, Trump exaggerated what's been accomplished with his expansion.

Veterans still must wait for weeks before they can get private care outside the VA system.

The program currently allows veterans to see doctors outside VA if they must wait more than 30 days for an appointment or drive more than 40 miles (65 kilometers) to a VA facility. Under new rules to take effect in June, veterans are to have that option for a private doctor if their VA wait is only 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes.

But the expanded Choice eligibility may do little to provide immediate help. That's because veterans often must wait even longer for an appointment in the private sector. Last year, then-Secretary David Shulkin said VA care is "often 40 percent better in terms of wait times" compared with the private sector. In 2018, 34 percent of all VA appointments were with outside physicians, down from 36 percent in 2017.

The VA also must resolve long-term financing because of congressional budget caps after the White House opposed new money to pay for the program. As a result, lawmakers could be forced later this year to limit the program or slash core VA or other domestic programs.

Also key to the program's success is an overhaul of VA's electronic medical records to allow seamless sharing of medical records with private physicians, a process expected to take up to 10 years. VA Secretary Robert Wilkie has said full implementation of the expanded Choice program is "years" away.

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Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

Source: Fox News National

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Berners-Lee says World Wide Web, at 30, must emerge from ‘adolescence’

FILE PHOTO: World Wide Web Inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks during the inauguration of Web Summit, Europe's biggest tech conference, in Lisbon
FILE PHOTO: World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks during the inauguration of Web Summit, Europe's biggest tech conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, Nov. 5, 2018. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes

March 11, 2019

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The fraying World Wide Web needs to rediscover its strengths and grow into maturity, its designer Tim Berners-Lee said on Monday, marking the 30th anniversary of the collaborative software project his supervisor initially dubbed “vague but exciting”.

Speaking to reporters at CERN, the physics research center outside Geneva where he invented the web, Berners-Lee said users of the web had found it “not so pretty” recently.

“They are all stepping back, suddenly horrified after the Trump and Brexit elections, realizing that this web thing that they thought was that cool is actually not necessarily serving humanity very well,” he said.

“It seems we don’t finish reeling from one privacy disaster before moving onto the next one,” he added, citing concerns about whether social networks were supporting democracy.

People who had grown up taking the internet’s neutrality for granted now found that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had “rolled that back”.

There was also a threat of fragmentation of the Internet into regulatory blocs – in the United States, the European Union, China and elsewhere – which would be “massively damaging”.

In an open letter to mark the anniversary, Berners-Lee said many people now felt unsure about whether the web was a force for good, but it would be defeatist and unimaginative to assume that it could not change for the better in the next 30 years.

“If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us. We will have failed the web”, he wrote.

“It’s our journey from digital adolescence to a more mature, responsible and inclusive future”.

But he was optimistic because of a strong resolve among governments to avoid balkanization of the Internet, and a strong resolve among people in social networks who had – surprisingly – been shocked at people trying to hack elections.

He said the editorial power of Facebook’s algorithm was “scary”, but Facebook was clearly thinking about such questions a great deal, and that it and other social media firms backed the principle of letting users extract and move their data.

Amid the concern, Berners-Lee said the anniversary was something to celebrate, and warmly recalled how his boss ordered a computer model that CERN did not possess, a deliberate “plot” to enable his project under the guise of testing the interoperability of different computers.

The boss, Mike Sendell, had penciled in an assessment of his idea as “vague but exciting”.

“Thank goodness it wasn’t ‘Exciting but vague’,” Berners-Lee said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by G Crosse)

Source: OANN

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Indian companies squeezed as inflation falls but interest rates remain high

FILE PHOTO: Reserve Bank of India logo is seen at the gate of its office in New Delhi
FILE PHOTO: A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) logo is seen at the gate of its office in New Delhi, India, November 9, 2018. REUTERS/Altaf Hussain/File Photo

April 3, 2019

By Manoj Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian businesses are getting squeezed. As economic growth slows and inflation sinks they have little ability to raise prices without losing sales, and yet they are getting almost no relief from borrowing costs with lending rates remaining high.

The result: profit margins get crushed. And that helps to explain why companies are not confident enough to significantly boost capital spending or hire at a robust pace.

The rise in India’ real interest rates – the comparison between the inflation rate and the rate people pay to borrow – will be a major headache for whoever wins India’s general election which lasts from April 11 to May 19. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party are expected to get a second term.

It is also an immediate problem for the monetary policy committee of India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as it decides whether to cut its official benchmark interest rate, and by how much, at a meeting on Thursday.

“Had the borrowing costs declined by 3-4 percentage points along with inflation, we would have made investments and created thousands of new jobs,” said Sudarshan Sareen, president of the All India Manufacturers Organisation.

HANDICAPPED ON GLOBAL STAGE

Indian manufacturers pay 12-14 percent bank lending rates annually, he said, the highest among the emerging market economies. The government pays a subsidy of 3-4 percentage points to banks to lower the costs for farmers.

The facts are simple. India’s retail inflation rate has dropped to below 3 percent from more than 10 percent in 2013. In the same six-year period, bank borrowing costs for manufacturers and retailers have declined only marginally by about one percent from over 13 percent, business leaders say.

That means real interest rates have gone up in last five years. Many economists, including Ravinder Dholoakia, a member of the RBI’s MPC, have said that real rates in India are too high.

For a graphic on India’s CPI inflation, RBI repo rates, see – https://tmsnrt.rs/2WH5xNQ

India is also suffering in comparison to international rivals.

World Bank data shows that real interest rates in India went up to 6.2 percent in 2017 from 2.5 percent in 2012, while real rates fell in many other Asian countries, including China.

India’s economy lost momentum in the October-December quarter, reducing the annual rate of growth to 6.6 percent, the slowest pace in five quarters.

New investment proposals declined to 14-year low of $138.72 billion in 2018/19, falling for the fourth straight year, according to data collected by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a Mumbai-based think tank.

Modi has announced an increase in the state interest rate subsidy on bank loans for small businesses, while pushing the central bank and state-run banks to cut rates.

The RBI is expected to cut its benchmark lending rate, the repo rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 6.0 percent this week, a Reuters poll of economists showed. It has cut policy rates by less than 2 percentage points since April 2012.

CALLS FOR BIGGER CUTS

A substantial cut in the repo rate and bank lending rates are needed to boost manufacturing and domestic demand, and bolster economic growth, said Ashwani Mahajan, an official of the economic wing of the Rashtriya Swayemsewak Sangh (RSS), a group close to Modi’s BJP, Mahajan said that the RBI’s forecasts for the inflation rate had been consistently too high.

“The forecasts of the RBI on inflation have become a joke as they usually go wrong. The economy is paying a heavy price due to its high-interest rate policy in the name of inflation targeting,” said Mahajan, a member of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. Mahajan said the RBI should cut the policy rate on Thursday by up to 1.75 bps, bringing the repo rate down to about 4.5 percent. The government, RSS and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch all agreed there needed to be sharp rate cuts, he said, while adding the timing and specific size of the moves was unclear.

There is also concern among government and central bank officials that commercial banks are not automatically passing through the RBI’s repo rate cuts to borrowers. India’s dominant state-owned banks are saddled with massive bad debt and weak deposit growth, restricting their ability to lend.

“Interest rates will remain elevated in India as the gap between deposits and lending is widening due to falling saving rates in the economy,” said Devindra Pant, chief economist at India Ratings, an arm of Fitch.

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Martin Howell & Kim Coghill)

Source: OANN

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Man who sent powder-filled letters to Trump sons gets probation

A Massachusetts man who sent threatening letters filled with white powder to President Trump’s sons and a Democratic U.S. senator was sentenced to probation Friday.

Daniel Frisiello, 25, of Beverly, was sentenced to five years of probation, with one year to serve in home detention with location monitoring and restitution, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

Frisiello pleaded guilty in October 2018 to 13 counts of mailing a threat to injure the person and six counts of false information and hoaxes.

He was arrested early last year after sending a letter filled with white powder to Donald Trump Jr in February 2018.

This booking photo released Thursday, March 1, 2018, by the Beverly Police Department shows Daniel Frisiello, of Beverly, Mass., accused of mailing five envelopes containing a white powder. Prosecutors are seeking three years in prison for Frisiello who admitted to sending threatening letters filled with white powder to President Donald Trump’s sons and others. Frisiello is set to be sentenced Friday, April 19, 2019, in Boston federal court.

This booking photo released Thursday, March 1, 2018, by the Beverly Police Department shows Daniel Frisiello, of Beverly, Mass., accused of mailing five envelopes containing a white powder. Prosecutors are seeking three years in prison for Frisiello who admitted to sending threatening letters filled with white powder to President Donald Trump’s sons and others. Frisiello is set to be sentenced Friday, April 19, 2019, in Boston federal court. (Beverly Police Dept via AP)

Trump Jr.’s now-ex-wife, Vanessa Trump, opened the letter and was briefly hospitalized after being exposed to the powder. Vanessa reportedly began coughing and feeling nauseous, however, she was soon cleared by doctors and the substance in the letter was found to be cornstarch.

LETTER WITH WHITE POWDER FOR TRUMP JR. CALLS HIM 'AWFUL,' SAYS HE'LL GET WHAT HE 'DESERVES'

Authorities said the letter included a threatening note that read: “You are an awful, awful person. I am surprised that your father lets you speak on TV. You are the family idiot, Eric looks smart.”

“This is the reason why people hate you, so you are getting what you deserve,” the note contained.

Other recipients included President Trump’s other son, Eric Trump, actor Antonio Sabato Jr. and Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Officials said they were able to track Frisiello down after examining a “glitter bomb” he allegedly sent to Michelle Dauber, a Stanford University law professor who supported an effort to recall a judge who made headlines when he sentenced a college student six months for sexual assault.

DONALD TRUMP JR. HITS NEWSWEEK, SUGGESTS MILLIONS OF ITS TWITTER FOLLOWERS ARE FAKE

Authorities said the font used in the letter sent to Dauber matched the lettering in the notes filled with white powder.

On Friday, Federal Judge Nathaniel Gorton said he declined to send Frisiello to prison because of concerns the 25-year-old would not respond well to incarceration. Frisiello's lawyer has said the man is developmentally disabled. But Groton stressed the sentence wasn't "lenient"

Frisiello thanked Groton and said the past year has been "hell" for his family. Prosecutors objected to the sentence.

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During the period of probation, Frisiello is prohibited from contacting victims in the case, sending letters through the mail, accessing the internet, and possessing and accessing computers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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What if Climate Warriors Put their Money Where their Mouths Are?

The other week, the infamous and much-derided Green New Deal was voted down in the Senate and with it the dreams of a Federal spending party for tackling climate change.

But maybe its advocates have been going about this the wrong way, engaged in political solutions and international treaties such as the Paris Agreement. To anybody with insight into political decision-making — or even a healthy skepticism about the miraculous workings of the political apparatus — trying to navigate such a minefield of special interests and entrenched divisions must have seemed like a fool’s errand. Trying to address externalities and global tragedies of the commons through a political prism might not be the best option.

What if climate activists, striking school children, television pundits, New York Time columnists and others — here affectionately referred to as Climate Warriors — joined forces and, on their own, tried to mitigate the harmful consequences of climate change?

Apparently, climate change induced natural disasters will still be with us even if we ceased emissions tomorrow. As such, we require protection — those least able to literally weather the storm most of all. As Climate Warriors’ preferred route for transforming society — i.e., politics — has faced a setback, perhaps there’s a more voluntary and individual way to offer assistance to those facing potential climate-related damages to life and property.

Financial Markets to the Rescue: Catastrophe Bonds

Catastrophe bonds (“Cat bonds”) is a fast-growing segment of the corporate bond market that emerged out of Hurricane Andrew in the 1990s, when property damages bankrupted several insurance companies. Insurance companies of the sort that you and I usually interact with pool risks across many customers so as to afford payouts for the unlucky few that are affected by damages. To protect themselves from worst possible outcomes, they typically transfer off some of their most extreme risks to re insurance companies – essentially, insurance companies’ own insurance policies. You might think about it as “capping” risk exposure at a pre-arranged level by paying reinsurance firms a fee to accept damage claims above a particular level ( Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway has large such business; other market leaders include Swiss Re, Munich Re and Hannover Re).

Cat bonds provide the same service as this traditional reinsurance business through publicly traded financial markets instead. Much like securitization in other areas, a Cat bond complements this firm-to-firm reinsurance business by allowing insurance companies to sell off risk straight to financial markets. Investors, similarly, have recently been much more willing to buy them since a Cat bond’s value and interest rate payouts vary with natural disasters rather than business cycles or financial crashes. Indeed, a standard basket of Cat bonds have delivered remarkably stable returns, even outperforming the S&P500 since 2006 (measured very opportunistically). Their two prime virtues from an investment point of view are that they are virtually uncorrelated with other kinds of investment risk (stocks, bonds, FX), and their volatility is microscopic.

Specifically, this is how a Cat bond works:

1) An insurance company offers up (“Cedes”, “Sponsors”) a well-specified risk for a section of its claimants, packaged into a bond with a face value of, say, $100m.

2) A group of investors (through an investment bank or other vehicle) puts up $100m in a Special Purpose Vehicle that holds nothing but the Cat bond funds (usually invested in short-term CDs or government bonds to ensure some minimum real return).

3) The ceding insurance company then pays regular premiums into the SPV for the insurance protection it now receives from the bond.

4) For the duration of the Cat bond — typically 3-5 years — the SPV sends its investors regular interest payments if no event takes place. Should the “Trigger event” (the event specified in the contract, such as earthquakes floods or droughts of a certain severity) occur, the losses are deducted primarily from the set-aside funds and made instantly available to the insurance company to pay for their clients’ damages.

The great benefit for the insurance company is that the money is set aside, ring-fenced, and instantly available should the terms of the contract be fulfilled (i.e. damages of a certain kind and magnitude). For investors, the construction offers a diversifiable income stream, uncorrelated with other markets, and typically yields a few percentage points above market rates of similar duration.

Even the huge storm damages in 2017 from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma did nothing to dissipate this emergent market. A recent article in Bloomberg reported that the Cat bond market have kept growing rapidly as climate change is believed to cause even more extreme weather in the future.

How Can Cat Bonds Mitigate Climate Change Damage?

The similarities between damages from extreme weather phenomena and climate change should be fairly obvious. In both cases we are talking about out-of-the-ordinary events, with damages and consequences that many communities are typically not set up to protect against. Dealing with the costs of climate change that Climate Warriors and scientists say will inevitably come, could thus be conveniently done through the Cat bond market. And the best thing? It requires no political negotiation, no global haggling of rights or responsibilities and no expansive packages navigated through Congress. It requires Climate Warriors to simply put their money where their mouths are — and start buying Cat bonds.

This is how it could work.

AOC, Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein and Elizabeth Warren create the “CW Cat Non-Profit” and invite all their staff and supporters and the parents of the striking European school children to join. There could be membership fees and grand events filled with eloquent speeches, but the key point is to amass lots of funds through donations, and start buying Cat bonds like crazy. The purposes are twofold: assist the growth of the Cat bond market and become a large enough player so that they can start setting terms from their “upstream” partners in the insurance and reinsurance business.

If these activists and pundits truly fear the outcome for which they are protesting, and if they truly believe the grand and sharp slogans of their banners, it shouldn’t be a big problem to start pooling money to fund inevitable damages from the very thing they detest.

Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations also ensure that they could quickly reach a large share of the Cat bond market. Currently, there are Cat bonds outstanding worth $37.9 billions with new issues of some $10bn per year (some of which is simply re-investment of old bonds). Adding up a 25%-salary contribution by the hundred or so politicians who have publicly backed the Green New Deal, a one-off $200 contribution by the 2m or so participants of the last month’s #FridaysForFuture (double it to include non-attending friends, relatives and families) and add a one-time 25% wealth transfer by outspoken and well-off proponents of the Green New Deal scheme such as Maher, Krugman, Warren, Gore, Harris (naturally, they wouldn’t object…?), we’re already at a billion dollars – enough to entirely buy out the March issue of Cat bonds . With some extra cash from the $12 billion that environmental charities raise every year, and the generous support of the very vocal supporters of the Green New Deal, the “CW Cat Non-Profit” is soon on track to become the largest player in this business.

The Climate Warrior’s Edge

Now, if this is just a fund-raising attempt, why couldn’t Climate Warriors just as well pour their money into renewables, putting up solar panels or invent smart electricity grids and green car engines?

They could. But here’s the beauty: they have no particular technical or comparative advantages in those fields. As Cat investors, they do. Let me show you:

1) Long time horizon

An obstacle for Cat bonds has been their limited maturity of 3-5 years, after which they fall due and the risks revert back to the insurance companies. One reason for this is that risk-averse investors have been reluctant to commit funds to longer terms than that, partly as the combined Trigger event risk rises very high; the 30-year likelihood of at least one Magnitude 6 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area is estimated at 98% . By emphasizing longer terms , CW Cat Non-Profit can induce market participant to expand bond durations.

2) Much lower required rate of return

Climate Warriors are excessively concerned with future generations , and losses — in contrast to regular investors — are to be welcomed as a needed redistribution from well-off donors to those literally affected by climate change. They therefore have much lower risk premia and, not running a for-profit, consequently require much lower rates of return for holding climate risk.

3) No Liquidity premium

As long-term investors, not primarily set on earning money for themselves, CW Cat Non-Profit does not value the option of withdrawing the assets for consumption needs, i.e., places no particular price on the liquidity of the Cat instrument. As is the case today, the Cat market is still immensely small and not as liquid as many other financial markets. For ordinary investors, this kind of investment therefore demands a liquidity premium, a higher-than-otherwise interest rate. Not for CW Cat Non-Profit, and they thereby become a better client for bond originators, as CW Cat Non-Profit is willing to take on more risk for less cost.

4) Recycled return

Since the CW Cat Non-Profit has no interest in earning investment return for itself, the revenue streams generated can be fruitfully invested in social projects or infrastructure improvements — or simply re-distributed to those without insurance policies that the organization finds worthy. Indeed, should it become a large enough player on the global Cat market they can likely offer premium reductions in exchange for payouts to refugees of climate change, contingent on, say, UN status.

For Climate Warriors, the defeat of the Green New Deal should not be gloomed over, as it offers its proponents the ability to put their money where their mouths are and start alleviating climate change damages. Provided, that is, that they can overcome their hostility to financial markets.



Matt Bracken gives his take on the social media unpersoning epidemic sweeping across the internet.

Source: InfoWars

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Athens painter turns blockbusters into motion picture art

Greek artist Axioti works on the billboard of the
Greek artist Virginia Axioti works on the billboard of the "Avengers: Endgame" movie in Athens, Greece, April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

April 25, 2019

By Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek artist Virginia Axioti’s work is seen by thousands of people every week, but none of it is digital.

As the designer of hand-painted billboards that hang over the entrance to Athens’ Athinaion cinema advertising the newest film, she can count on a regular audience without having to embrace the internet.

Her latest work set the scene for the Greek opening on Wednesday night of “Avengers: Endgame” from Disney’s Marvel Studios, the culmination of 22 Marvel films since 2007, which could break global box-office records.

Sticking with hand-painted billboards continues a tradition introduced in 1960 at the 970-seat cinema, when it was founded by Axioti’s grandfather and great-uncle. One of the city’s oldest cinemas, it is the only one that still crafts its billboard posters by hand.

“The most basic difference (with digital posters) … is the human touch. It stands out, the gaze will stay on it … it is not static, it is like something alive,” the 41 year old artist, now a co-owner of the cinema, told Reuters.

Still, creating an advert for Disney’s latest blockbuster sets a particular challenge, with seven superheroes in various poses to accommodate.

“I am forced to add more elements than I would (normally), which makes it too busy for my taste, like it has a lot of noise,” Axioti said from the studio in her home in an Athens suburb, as she deftly added color to Tony Stark’s hair, played on screen by Robert Downey Jr.

Axioti works in turns with Vassilis Dimitriou, a former boxer who has been painting for the Athinaion for over four decades.

The cinema’s location at a busy intersection in the Ampelokipoi district of the city guarantees a big audience for her work and allows passers-by an opportunity for escapism however brief, she said.

Axioti, a fine arts graduate who also sings and plays music, spends three to four days at a time to complete a poster and produces between 20 and 25 each year.

The size of the billboards, which average 6.2 x 2.20 meters pose a regular challenge, she says, because she is quite petite.

Her favorite billboard was for the 2017 drama “Darkest Hour” about a period of Winston Churchill’s time as British prime minister during World War Two.

A big fan of the actor Gary Oldman who plays Churchill, she liked it so much, she said, that she kept it at home for a day, just so she could keep looking at it on her living room wall.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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US terror label for Iran Revolutionary Guard takes effect

The U.S. terrorism label for Iran's Revolutionary Guard formally took effect on Monday, amid a battle between the Trump administration and some in Congress over waivers on oil and nuclear sanctions that are due to expire or be extended early next month.

The Guard's formal designation as a "foreign terrorist organization" — the first-ever for an entire division of another government — kicked in with a notice published in the Federal Register.

The move adds a layer of sanctions to the elite military unit and makes it a crime for anyone in or subject to U.S. jurisdiction to provide it with material support. Depending on how broadly "material support" is interpreted, the designation may complicate U.S. diplomatic and military cooperation with certain third-country officials, notably in Iraq and Lebanon, who deal with the Guard.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the step with great fanfare last week, opening a one-week consultation period with Congress during which members could have raised objections.

Lawmakers were broadly supportive, but congressional Iran hawks are now expressing concern that the administration may extend waivers on oil and nuclear sanctions. Those sanctions, which are unrelated to the Guard designation, were imposed last November following Trump's withdrawal of the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal that May.

They target major elements of Iran's economy, notably its energy sector, by hitting foreign companies and governments with so-called "secondary sanctions" if they continue to do business with targeted Iranian entities. A main goal has been to dry up revenue from Iran's oil exports, which the U.S. says is the main driver of the country's funding of destabilizing activities throughout the Middle East and beyond.

In order not to shock oil markets with the sudden loss of Iranian crude, the administration granted several waivers that allowed some nations and Taiwan to continue their imports as long as they moved to reduce them to zero. Those waivers are due to expire in early May, and Iran hawks in Congress and elsewhere are urging the administration not to renew any of them. They say extending even some of the eight waivers would run counter to Trump and Pompeo's stated goal of keeping "maximum pressure" on Iran.

U.S. officials have been coy when asked about the waivers, leading to concern among hawks that some or all of them may be extended.

The administration's point man for Iran, Brian Hook, has said that three of the waivers won't need to be extended as those countries have eliminated all Iranian oil imports. But he has remained silent on the other five. Pompeo has similarly refused to comment on the possibility of extensions.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Pompeo was pressed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about whether the oil sanctions waivers, as well as waivers related to technical cooperation at Iranian nuclear facilities, would be extended. He suggested that some at the State Department were pushing for extensions.

"Let me urge you and urge the department unequivocally not to grant the nuclear waivers and not to grant the oil waivers," Cruz said, "I think maximum pressure should mean maximum pressure."

Pompeo demurred, but during a trip to South America over the weekend he bristled when asked if the Iran hawks had reason to be concerned.

"It's ludicrous," he told reporters accompanying him. "It's ludicrous. Look, people want to tell stories, people want to sell newspapers. I've got it. Congressmen will grandstand, I've got that too. The State Department's going to get it right. We understand our mission."

Cruz was not impressed.

"The Senate Foreign Relations Committee needs to understand why some in the State Department think it's a good idea to keep enriching the Ayatollah with oil billions and to let Iran keep spinning centrifuges in a bunker that they dug into the side of a mountain so they could build nuclear weapons," he said in a statement released by his office.

Source: Fox News National

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The headquarters of Wirecard AG is seen in Aschheim near Munich
FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Wirecard AG, an independent provider of outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payment transactions is seen in Aschheim near Munich, Germany April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

April 26, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – Wulf Matthias will not stand for a second term as Wirecard’s chairman in 2020, German daily Handelsblatt said on Friday, citing sources in the financial industry.

For age reasons alone this would not be an option for Matthias, aged 75, Handelsblatt added.

Matthias will keep his mandate until it ends in 2020, the paper quoted a company spokeswoman as saying.

Wirecard was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Thomas Seythal)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Credit Suisse logo is pictured on a bank in Geneva
FILE PHOTO: The Credit Suisse logo is pictured on a bank in Geneva, Switzerland, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

April 26, 2019

ZURICH (Reuters) – Shareholders approved Credit Suisse’s 2018 compensation report with an 82 percent majority on Friday, overriding frustrations expressed at its annual general meeting over jumps in executive pay during a year its share price plummeted.

Three shareholder advisers had recommended investors vote against Switzerland’s second-biggest bank’s remuneration report, while a fourth backed the report but expressed reservations about whether management pay matched performance.

The approval marked a slight increase over the 80.8 percent support garnered for the bank’s 2017 compensation report.

(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Michael Shields)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the trading floor of Barclays Bank at Canary Wharf in London
FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the trading floor of Barclays Bank at Canary Wharf in London, Britain December 7, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Simon Jessop and Sinead Cruise

LONDON (Reuters) – Activist investor Edward Bramson is likely to fail in his attempt to get a board seat at Barclays’ annual meeting next week, even though shareholders are dissatisfied with performance of the group’s investment bank.

New York-based Bramson’s Sherborne Investors and the board of the British bank have been sparring for months over Barclays’ strategy.

Bramson wants to scale back Barclays’ investment bank to reduce risk and boost shareholder returns. Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley remains staunchly committed to growing the business out of trouble.

After failing to persuade Staley to change course since he began building a 5.5 percent stake in the bank in March last year, Bramson hopes a board seat will rachet up the pressure.

Both sides have written to shareholders pitching their case and Bramson has courted investors in one-on-one meetings, although none have publicly backed him yet.

Interviews by Reuters with five institutional investors in Barclays suggest Bramson has failed to persuade them.

Sherborne declined to comment.

Mirza Baig, head of investment stewardship at top-40 shareholder Aviva Investors, said Bramson was welcome on the bank’s register but the boardroom was a step too far.

“He has created a lot of value at other businesses, but, generally, when he has come in as executive chair and taken full control. This would be a different case where he would just be one lone voice on the board,” he said.

A second Barclays shareholder said he backed Bramson’s goal of improving returns but via an “evolutionary” approach.

“If you look at banks that have tried to restructure their operations in investment banking – you look at Natwest Markets, Deutsche Bank – I struggle to think of an example where a roughshod restructuring has been accretive to shareholder value.”

A third, top-30 investor said he had been impressed by incoming Chairman Nigel Higgins’ grasp of the challenge in hand, and felt investors would give him time.

“Management know they have to execute and deliver improved returns… [Higgins] will continue to re-shape the board but obviously he didn’t feel that having someone with a diametrically opposed view on it would be helpful.”

A fourth, top-30 investor agreed: “We voted for the chairman to come in and it would be crazy to allow an activist to join the board (at this time).”

Jupiter Fund Management, the 24th largest investor, said it also planned to vote against Bramson.

Barclays has nearly 500 institutional shareholders, Refinitiv data showed.

Since Staley joined Barclays in 2015, the investment bank returns relative to capital invested have increased but are still underperforming the overall business.

Barclays’ first-quarter figures showed the investment bank posted a 6 percent drop in income from its markets business and a 17 percent fall in banking advisory fees.

Returns in the investment bank fell to 9.5 percent from 13.2 percent a year ago.

Famed for successful campaigns against smaller British companies in sectors from chemicals to advertising, Bramson’s board seat pitch has been rebuffed by shareholder advisory firms.

Institutional Shareholder Services, the world’s biggest, said Bramson’s proposal “falls short of what can reasonably be expected from a shareholder trying to address issues at a 28 billion pounds, systemically important bank”.

Glass Lewis also flagged concern about Bramson’s lack of banking experience and “questionable” shareholding structure, referring to Sherborne’s use of derivative contracts to hedge losses should its strategy fail.

Critics said the arrangement meant his interests are not truly aligned with those of other long-term shareholders.

British advisory firm Pirc, however, said it recommended that investors abstain in the vote on Bramson’s proposal as a challenge to the board to do better in the year ahead – or face a similar contest in 2020.

(Editing by Jane Merriman)

Source: OANN

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After an over 15-month pregnancy, “Akuti,” a 7-year-old Greater One Horned Indian Rhinoceros, gave birth as a result of induced ovulation and artificial insemination at Zoo Miami, April 23, 2019.

Ron Magill/Zoo Miami

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Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: File photo of a Chevron gas station sign in Del Mar, California
FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is seen in Del Mar, California, in this April 25, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – U.S. oil and natural gas producer Chevron Corp reported a 27 percent fall in quarterly earnings on Friday, hit by lower crude prices and weaker margins in its refining and chemicals businesses.

Net income attributable to the company fell to $2.65 billion, or $1.39 per share, for the first quarter ended March 31, from $3.64 billion, or $1.90 per share, a year earlier.

Earlier in the day, larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp reported earnings well below analysts’ estimates, as margins in its refining business were hurt by higher Canadian prices and heavy scheduled maintenance.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Source: OANN

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