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FILE PHOTO: Former energy lobbyist David Bernhardt testifies before a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on his nomination of to be Interior secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
April 15, 2019
By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general office has opened a probe into recently-confirmed Secretary David Bernhardt on several allegations, including conflict of interest, it said in a letter to lawmakers on Monday.
Mary Kendall, the Interior Department’s deputy inspector general, told Senator Ron Wyden in a letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, that it received seven complaints from a “wide assortment of complainants alleging various potential conflict of interest and other violations when he was deputy secretary of the department.”
Kendall said her office had opened an investigation and was continuing to gather information about the complaints. She did not detail the other complaints against Bernhardt, a Republican.
Wyden and Senator Mazie Hirono, both Democrats, had urged the inspector general in separate requests to investigate allegations that Bernhardt had inappropriately blocked a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assessment of the effect of pesticides on several endangered species. The service is an office of the Interior Department.
Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, was confirmed by the Senate last week in a 56 to 41 vote. He replaced Ryan Zinke who resigned under a cloud of ethics investigations.
Wyden, who had pushed for a delay in Bernhardt’s confirmation vote, had also asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Bernhardt was in violation of lobbying disclosure laws.
“We now have an Interior Secretary who has been on the job for one full business day and is already under investigation,” Wyden said. “With Bernhardt’s track record and the number of allegations against him, it’s no surprise. At least now, the American people will finally get the answers they deserve.”
Bernhardt’s critics, including environmental groups, have said his previous work as a lobbyist could risk conflicts of interest, unless he recuses himself from certain issues, because he worked for companies that could benefit by opening up lands to development.
The Interior Department, which employs more than 70,000 people and oversees more than 20 percent of the U.S. land surface, has been central to President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” policy of boosting energy production.
Interior spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said Bernhardt “is in complete compliance with his ethics agreement and all applicable laws, rules, and regulations.”
Vander Voort also said that the ethics office at the department had already reviewed many of the accusations at Bernhardt’s request and determined that he was in compliance with his ethics agreement and all laws.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado/File Photo/File Photo
April 15, 2019
BRASILIA (Reuters) – The American Museum of Natural History in New York said on Monday that it will not host a planned gala dinner that was set to honor Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro as “Person of the Year.”
The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce’s plans to honor Bolsonaro, who has suggested he would pull Brazil out of the Paris Accord on climate change and wants to develop the Amazon rainforest, at a museum dedicated to science and nature was met with outrage last week.
The museum had expressed concern over the event last week, saying it had been booked before the decision was made to honor Bolsonaro.
“With mutual respect for the work & goals of our individual organizations, we jointly agreed that the Museum is not the optimal location for the Brazilian-Am. Chamber of Commerce gala dinner,” the museum said on its official Twitter account.
“This traditional event will go forward at another location on the original date & time.”
Bolsonaro, who styled his campaign for office last year after that of U.S. President Donald Trump, drew further criticism from environmentalists last week by creating a body that could pardon environmental fines and saying that a vast Amazon reserve could be opened to mining.
(Reporting by Jake Spring and Tatiana Bautzer; editing by Bill Berkrot)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A natural gas flare on an oil well pad burns as the sun sets outside Watford City, North Dakota January 21, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Cullen
April 15, 2019
By Valerie Volcovici
(Reuters) – A federal court has struck down the Trump administration’s repeal of an Obama-era policy aimed at boosting revenue for taxpayers by changing how energy companies value sales of coal, oil and gas extracted from federal and tribal land.
The decision, which found the Interior Department’s repeal of the so-called valuation rule was “arbitrary and capricious”, was the latest blow to the Trump administration’s “energy dominance” agenda in the courts, where environmental groups and some states have challenged dozens of de-regulatory actions.
“Once again, the Trump Administration has been checked by the courts in its unlawful attempt to bend over backwards to please special interests at the expense of hardworking Americans,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement late on Friday.
Becerra said the district court ruling would result in $71 million a year more in royalties for U.S. taxpayers from companies that mine or drill on federal lands.
The Interior Department is currently reviewing the decision, agency spokeswoman Molly Block said on Monday. Interior and industry group interveners have 60 days to appeal the decision.
The valuation rule was proposed by former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in 2016 to close a loophole that enabled companies to dodge royalty payments when mining on taxpayer-owned public land. It required energy companies to pay royalties on sales to the first unaffiliated customer, known as an arm’s-length sale, as the fuel moves to market.
A Reuters investigation found in 2012 that coal companies were using affiliated brokers to settle royalty payments on exports to Asia at much lower domestic prices.
In early 2017, former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the agency would move to repeal the rule, which he said increased costs for coal, oil and gas companies and hampered production on federal lands, “making us rely more and more on foreign imports of oil and gas.”
Zinke said the department’s royalty policy committee, formed in 2017 with advisers from energy companies and local governments, would propose alternatives to the rule.
Conservation groups last fall sued the Interior Department, accusing the committee being too heavily stacked with industry representatives.
In her decision on Friday, district court judge Saundra Brown said the Interior Department moved ahead with the repeal of the valuation rule without offering a reasoned justification for doing so under the federal Administrative Procedures Act.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Source: OANN
Chairman of The Social Democratic Party Antti Rinne speaks to media at the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle studios in Helsinki, Finland April 15, 2019. Lehtikuva/Antti Aimo-Koivisto via REUTERS
April 15, 2019
By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s Social Democrats (SDP) embarked on Monday on the complex task of forming a governing coalition, after beating a nationalist, anti-immigration party by a hairsbreadth in the most fragmented election in the country’s history.
The SDP, which finished first in Sunday’s ballot with 17.7 percent, could team up with two smaller left-wing parties, its leader Antti Rinne said.
“At first sight they feel like the most natural partners,” he told private news outlet Lannen Media, referring to the Greens and the Left Alliance, which scored 11.5 percent and 8.2 percent respectively.
But coalition talks are expected to take weeks after the first Finnish election in which no party won 20 percent, leaving a polarised parliament that reflects deep social divisions over immigration and the environment, and how to reform a creaking welfare system deeply rooted in Nordic social traditions.
Rinne, a 56-year-old former trade union leader tasked by convention with forming a government as the head of the biggest party, would have to add at least a fourth party to give him a parliamentary majority.
But he is at odds over the future shape of public services with the centrist and center-right groups that he might try to ally with, and he has ruled out any cooperation with the nationalist, eurosceptic Finns Party, which won 17.5 percent of the vote.
The leftists want to preserve the welfare system through tax hikes while the center-right wants to see it streamlined because of rising costs linked to a rapidly ageing population.
“The rising inequality has to be turned around. We need to invest in education and equality in the labor market,” Rinne said.
Meanwhile, chiming with a groundswell of support for far-right parties across Europe, the message from the Finns Party has resonated with voters who believe the nation has gone too far in addressing issues such as climate change and migration at its own expense.
Its leader Jussi Halla-aho, fined by the Supreme Court in 2012 for blog comments linking Islam to pedophilia and Somalis to theft, won over 30,000 constituency votes on Sunday, more than any other parliamentary candidate.
The centre-right government of Prime Minister Juha Sipila resigned last month, saying it could not deliver on a long-delayed healthcare reform widely seen as crucial to securing the long-term viability of government finances.
Until a new government is chosen Sipila, whose Centre Party won 13.8 percent on Sunday, will remain as head of a caretaker cabinet.
Finland’s largest business daily Kauppalehti said the Social Democrats, the centre-right National Coalition – which won 17.0 percent – and the Greens were most likely to form the core of the next government.
But Rinne faced “a mountain-sized challenge” to form a workable parliamentary majority, it wrote.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; editing by Justyna Pawlak and John Stonestreet)
Source: OANN
Puberty-blocking drugs, mastectomies, vaginal surgery and fake penises – all with zero chance of reversal – these are just some of the radical experimental methods being used on children. The madness must stop.
Imagine that you are the parent of a five-year-old boy who innocently informs you one day that he is a girl. Of course, the natural reaction would be to laugh, not phone up the nearest gender transitioning clinic. You have no idea how your little boy came to believe such a thing; possibly it was through something he heard at the daycare center, or maybe a program he saw on television. In any case, he insists that he ‘identifies’ as a female.
Eventually, possibly at the encouragement of your local school, you pay a visit to a physician. You hope this medical professional will be able to provide you and your child with some sound counseling to clear up his confusion. Prepare yourself to be disappointed. Your doctor will be forced, according to state and medical dictate, to follow the professional guidelines known as ‘affirmative care.’ It sounds nice and harmless, doesn’t it? In fact, the program could be best described as nothing short of diabolical.
The Medical Harms of Hormonal and Surgical Interventions for Gender Dysphoric Children
Following the ‘affirmative care’ approach, the doctor is required to follow the child’s lead, not vice-versa, as many people believe the doctor-patient relationship in this particular case would best work. In other words, if the child tells the doctor that he believes he is a girl, the doctor must comply with that ‘reality’ no matter what biology tells him or her to be the case. But this is just the beginning of the madness.
As the child’s parent, you will be encouraged to start referring to your son as your ‘daughter,’ and even permit him to choose a feminine name, as well as matching clothes. Teachers will be instructed to let your son use the girl’s bathroom while at school. The question of the social stigma attached to such a lifestyle change, complete with bullying, is rarely brought into the equation. Therapists will seldom discuss with the parents the social implications of such a mental and physical change; indeed, many will insist the changes are ‘reversible’ should the child one day have a change of heart. If only things were that easy.
Let’s pause for a moment and ask what should be the most obvious question, especially among medical professionals: ‘Is it not terribly naive to support the fleeting belief of a child, who still believes in Santa Claus, that he/she is the opposite sex? Isn’t there a very high possibility that the child is just confused and the thought will pass? Moreover, why did we never hear about such episodes just 10 years ago, yet today we are led to believe it is some sort of epidemic?’ Instead of working with the child and his newfound identity from such an obvious approach, in the majority of cases the child will be placed on the fast-track to gender transitioning. This is where the horror story begins.
One parent, ‘Elaine,’ a member of the advocacy group Kelsey Coalition whose daughter underwent “life-altering medical interventions,”came to understand that the transition is immensely harmful to the future health and well-being of her child.
“Once the teenage years begin, affirmative care means giving young people cross-sex hormones,” Elaine said during a panel discussion organized by the Heritage Foundation.
“Girls as young as twelve are prescribed testosterone for lifetime usage, while boys are given estrogen. These are serious hormonal treatments that impact brain development, cardiovascular health and may increase the risk of cancer.”
This leads us to the operating table, where adolescents, lacking the mental maturity necessary to make such a huge life-altering choice, are exposed to the knife of irreversible surgical manipulation. Double mastectomies on girls, for example, as well as the fashioning of false penises derived from flesh borrowed from other parts of the body, are just some of the unprecedented procedures now available.
Elaine mentioned the high-profile story of one Jazz Jennings, who was diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ and raised as a girl since the age of five. He was treated with hormones at the age of eleven, and at the age of 17, Jazz underwent surgery to remove his penis and create a simulated vagina out of his stomach lining.
“After surgery, Jazz’s wounds began separating and a blood blister began to form. An emergency surgery was performed. According to Jazz’s doctor, ‘As I was getting her on the bed, I heard something go ‘pop.’ When I looked, the whole thing has split open.’”
Elaine called the case of Jazz a “medical experiment on a child” that “has been playing out on television for the past 12 years.” It should be noted that a similar drama-packed scenario captivated the nation with the high-profile, made-for-television sexual transition of Caitlyn Jenner, born Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic gold medalist, who was quite possibly the greatest American athlete of all time.
The obvious question is ‘how many impressionable children, many experiencing their own bodily changes in the form of puberty, were persuaded to decide in favor of gender transitioning (something that a child could have only heard about from some external media or source, unless the parents engage in such odd discussion topics at the dinner table) after watching these celebrity persona?’ By now, few people would doubt the powerful influence that TV celebrities have over people, and especially adolescents. In fact, that is the entire notion behind the idea of a ‘positive role model.’ I am not sure Caitlin Jenner would qualify for such a part.
According to Michael Laidlaw, M.D., these children, who are experiencing what the medical community has dubbed ‘gender dysphoria,’ will move beyond their condition either naturally or with the assistance of a therapist. Meanwhile, according to Laidlaw, citing studies, many of the girls and boys who display symptoms have neuro-psychiatric conditions and autism.
“Social media and YouTube, things like that, binge-watching YouTube videos of transitioners seem to be playing a role…as well as contagion” in popularizing the idea among the masses.
The movement is predicated upon the modern liberal idea of ‘gender identity,’ which has been defined as a “person’s core internal sense of their own gender,” regardless as to what the biological facts of their sex prove.
Dr. Laidlaw presented perhaps the best case against parents and their children rushing to the conclusion that their children need puberty blockers, for example, or extreme doses of hormones, when he discussed what happens when a person is diagnosed with cancer.
“If a child or somebody you knew had cancer, would you want pathology results, would you want imaging to prove [the condition] before you give harmful chemotherapeutics,” he asked. Yet we are allowing children and adolescents to undergo irreversible chemical and surgical procedures without being able to see any evidence that shows the presence of ‘the opposite sex’ in the patient.
In other words, the medical community is monkey-wrenching with not only Mother Nature, but with the lives of children, with radical and irreversible experiments that have not been proven to promote the happiness and wellbeing of those on the receiving (or subtracting) end.
“We are giving very harmful therapies on the basis of no objective diagnosis,” Dr. Laidlaw said.
Laidlaw was forced to repeat what has been widely known for millennia.
“There are only two sexes,” he said.
“Sex is identified at birth, nobody assigns it. Doctors don’t arbitrarily assign this person to be a boy and this person to be a girl. We all know how to identify it.
“I would say ‘ask your grandmother who doesn’t read the scientific journals, and they will tell you exactly how to identify boys from girls.’”
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: President of the Asian Development Bank Takehiko Nakao arrives for the sixth Mekong Greater Sub-Region Summit (GMS-6) in the National Convention Center (NCC) in Hanoi, Vietnam 31 March 2018. Minh Hoang/Pool via REUTERS
April 15, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – The head of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Monday that regional economies in Asia were sustaining solid growth led by domestic demand and the services sector despite some negative effects of the Sino-U.S. trade war.
Trade friction between the world’s two largest economies is impeding growth in China, ADB President Takehiko Nakao told reporters in a group interview.
“It’s natural for the Chinese economy to slow,” said Nakao, a former Japanese vice finance minister for international affairs.
(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim)
Source: OANN
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
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, reacts during a ceremony marking his first 100 days in office at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
April 12, 2019
By Jake Spring
BRASILIA (Reuters) – The American Museum of Natural History said on Friday that it is “concerned” an event booked to be held at the New York museum will honor far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a “person of the year,” a move that has triggered online outrage.
The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce is holding its annual Person of the Year gala at the museum on May 14, during which it will give the award to Bolsonaro, according to the chamber’s website. The award is typically given to one Brazilian and one American each year, although this year’s American recipient is not listed.
Bolsonaro, who styled his campaign for office last year after that of U.S. President Donald Trump, has considered pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change and railed against what he sees as indiscriminate fines for environmental crimes. He continues to support mining and other development in the Amazon rainforest region, considered by most scientists as the world’s biggest natural defense against climate change.
“The external, private event at which the current President of Brazil is to be honored was booked at the Museum before the honoree was secured,” the museum said on its official Twitter account. “We are deeply concerned, and we are exploring our options.”
Bolsonaro’s office and the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The responses to the museum’s tweet included hundreds of messages urging that the event be canceled, with people identifying themselves as activists and scholars saying it was inappropriate that Bolsonaro be honored at an institution of science because of his views.
“It certainly is cause for outrage,” Philip Fearnside, an American professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research and one of the most cited experts on the jungle, said in a telephone interview.
“He denies the existence of anthropogenic climate change and he’s appointed several other denialists to his Cabinet,” Fearnside said. “And he is also dismantling the environmental protections in Brazil … so obviously it’s not something to be celebrated by science.”
(Reporting by Jake Spring; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Source: OANN
The German share price index DAX graph is pictured at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Staff
April 12, 2019
(Reuters) – European shares ticked lower on Friday, dragged down by banks, while lingering worries over global growth kept investors on edge before the crucial earnings season in the United States.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.2 percent at 0718 GMT, on track to end the week lower after two weeks of gains. All major markets in the region fell.
Concern about sluggish global growth were reinforced this week by central banks in the euro zone and United States, which maintained their dovish stances and separately warned of risks to the world economy.
Wall Street banks JP Morgan and Wells Fargo report results on Friday, opening a U.S. earnings season that analysts expect will see the first year-on-year contraction in quarterly profits since 2016.
Banco Santander and UniCredit pulled the banking sector down 0.5 percent. All other European sectors were flat or lower.
Banco Santander dropped 0.8 percent after the Spanish bank announced an offer to buy the 25 percent stake it doesn’t own in its Mexican unit in an all-share deal worth around 2.6 billion euros ($2.93 billion).
UniCredit fell 1 percent after Italy’s biggest bank said it is one of the banks accused of running a cartel in trading euro zone government bonds between 2007 and 2012 as financial crises dragged down banks and several European economies.
London-based online trading platform Plus500 plunged 37 percent as revenue for the first quarter dropped to around a fifth of last year’s, hurt by a fall in trading volumes.
Its results dragged rival IG Group’s shares down 7 percent, to the bottom of STOXX 600. CMC Markets shed more than 5 percent.
Volkswagen AG dipped after China’s JAC Motors said the two companies had not held talks, despite reports VW was interested in taking a stake in the Chinese electric-vehicle maker.
Germany’s Software AG rose after the company released preliminary results for the first quarter and raised the outlook for its Adabas & Natural business line.
Swiss train and carriage manufacturer Stadler Rail jumped 11 percent after its debut on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
(Reporting by Medha Singh and Agamoni Ghosh in Bengaluru, editing by Larry King)
Source: OANN
The logo of Toshiba Corp is seen at its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, November 6, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino
April 12, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – Toshiba Corp shares fell on Friday after the collapse of an agreement to offload its U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) business, a new blow for the Japanese conglomerate which has been shedding assets to turn around its business.
Toshiba said late on Thursday that China’s ENN Ecological Holdings Co had scrapped an agreement to take over the LNG business due to a failure to get approvals from shareholders and a U.S. panel that monitors foreign investments.
Toshiba shares fell as much as 5.4 percent to 3,485 yen and were trading at 3,685 yen by around 0030 GMT.
Toshiba must now look for a new buyer for the business that it previously said could potentially cause losses of as much as 1 trillion yen ($9 billion).
A failure to find a buyer could derail Toshiba’s recovery from the fallout of the bankruptcy of its U.S. nuclear power unit Westinghouse, analysts have said.
(Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Source: OANN
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