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A bay with enclosures with nearly 100 whales held captive is seen through a razor barbed wire, in Russia’s far eastern Primorye region, Russia, April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev
April 8, 2019
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian authorities have decided to free nearly 100 whales held in cages in Russia’s Far East, the governor of Russia’s Primorsky Region said on Monday, the TASS news agency reported.
Images of the whales, kept in cramped enclosures in a bay near the Sea of Japan port town of Nakhodka, first appeared last year, triggering a wave of criticism.
The animals were originally caught by a company which planned to sell them to China. But once their fate became known the Kremlin intervened and ordered local authorities to act to find a way of freeing the animals.
The decision to release the whales, after months of delays, coincided with a visit to the enclosures by Jean-Michel Cousteau, a French oceanographer and son of famous marine expert Jacques Cousteau.
“An official decision has been taken to release all the animals into the wild,” Oleg Kozhemyako, the governor of Primorsky Region, was quoted as saying by TASS.
“Scientists from Cousteau’s team and Russian scientists will decide when and which animals to release.”
Kozhemyako was also cited as saying that the authorities would set up a special rehabilitation facility for the whales where the conditions would be as close as possible to their natural environment and where any animals that were suffering could be treated.
The Kremlin has said the 11 orcas and 87 beluga whales were held in cruel conditions and were intended for sale to aquariums and Chinese buyers.
But it has also said that it is difficult to release them into the wild without harming them.
Russia’s FSB security service brought charges against four companies involved in the case in February for breaking fishing laws.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe)
Source: OANN
Li Yalan, chairwoman of Beijing Gas Group, poses for a picture during an interview with Reuters at the company headquarters in Beijing, China May 25, 2018. REUTERS/Chen Aizhu
April 8, 2019
By Chen Aizhu
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China’s surging natural gas demand in 2019 will require more efforts to better connect end-users to suppliers as government policies and a recent tax cut will continue to spur consumption of the clean-burning fuel, a senior industry executive said.
China’s gas demand will expand by 30 billion to 40 billion cubic meters (bcm) this year, Li Yalan, Chairwoman of Beijing Gas Group, the main supplier to the Chinese capital, said in an interview on Friday.
That would be an increase of as much as 14 percent from the 280.3 bcm of gas China consumed in 2018, according to data from state economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Gas consumption in 2018 was 18 percent higher than in 2017, the NDRC said.
The rising gas demand is a result of China’s government continuing policies to switch to gas from coal for heating and industrial uses and as the industrial sector buys more gas following cuts in the value-added tax that went into effect on April 1, she said.
“The broad direction is not going to change, which is to restructure the energy mix by increasing the share of natural gas,” Li told Reuters in a phone interview.
“What China needs to do is to connect the gas supplies with the demand nicely to ensure a smooth switch.”
Better state planning to ensure grid connections and to encourage energy companies to boost imports in advance helped China’s gas market, the world’s third largest, to expand by a record 43 bcm last year, Li said.
The expansion occurred after a supply crunch in the winter of 2017/18 as suppliers struggled to meet the demand surge for gas as a result of the policy to move millions of households to gas from coal and a cold winter.
“This year we’ll likely see the market growing between 30 and 40 bcm, which is a normal range,” said Li.
With domestic gas production growth capped by high development costs and new piped gas from Russia’s Siberian fields only due to start end of the year, China is expected to ramp up imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), said Li.
China, the world’s second-largest LNG buyer since 2017, boosted imports 41 percent in 2018 to 54 million tonnes.
Li said Beijing, one of the world’s biggest gas consuming cities, consumed a record 18.5 bcm of gas last year, up 14 percent from 2017.
Gas use may also rise after the government’s cut in the value-added tax for manufacturers, as local authorities prepare to execute reductions in the fuel prices for industrial and commercial users, said Li.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Source: OANN
Apr 7, 2019; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Virginia Cavaliers guard Kyle Guy during a press conference for the 2019 men’s Final Four championship game at US Bank Stadium. Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
April 7, 2019
MINNEAPOLIS – Lee Larkins first got his hands on Kyle Guy as an Indiana sixth-grader who might as well be shooting free throws with his eyes closed.
“I shot with two hands, kind of like (motions his hands over his forehead and pushes, palms high, in opposite directions),” Guy, now a junior at Virginia, said Sunday, about 16 hours removed from the heroic game-winning free throws that sent the Cavaliers to the national championship game and Auburn home from the NCAA Tournament.
A self-described slasher in middle school, Guy grew into a sharpshooter. There’s a Jimmy Chitwood — the sweet-shooting Hickory High School guard in the film “Hoosiers” for the uninitiated — on every block in Indiana, where hoops is a religion and virtually all other things take second billing. Not just on winter Fridays in high school gyms. Parents get the ball bouncing on the same day they toss the baby booties.
Guy credits, in part, his middle school guidance counselor, Larkins. Guy’s recollection was Larkins, who played football at Purdue and later coached there after playing middle school for Mike Fratello, forced him to work out with him.
“I have two daughters and they’re a little bit older than Kyle. He used to come into the gym, always had a basketball in his hand,” Larkins told Field Level Media on Sunday afternoon. “It started as — he went against all girls. All girls and him.”
Larkins is not the only basketball mentor in Guy’s life, although he remains a constant. So when Guy strolled to the line with the game hanging in the balance Saturday night with 0.6 seconds left, the Larkins family started celebrating. That included Larkins’ two older daughters who were part of the Kyle Guy Construction Project.
“He was built for this. This is what I texted him last night. Right away, my mindset is that he’s knocking these three down. This is what he trained his mind for,” Larkins said.
“At the end of every workout, we shot free throws with his eyes closed. He had to be at 80 percent. There was no doubt in my mind, this kid is going to make these shots. That same scenario, I guarantee you, he’s played it out in Lawrence Central’s gym. It’s a mindset we were trained on.”
Larkins only had to open the door once for Guy to keep showing up at practices. He begged to be coached hard, and picked up nuances of the game on the fly.
Before long, Larkins had no doubt about Guy’s destiny.
“We constantly worked on his shot, but he wanted to be coached and loved to be coached hard,” said Larkins, who now runs an AAU program and has coached women’s basketball at IUPUI.
“His grandmother was my boss. And then I told her and his dad, I said, ‘This kid can be Mr. Basketball.’ He picked up everything. Worked so hard. In my gym, I’m pretty fundamentally sound: Don’t fade away, straight up and straight down. He picked up from there. It shows now. Just a really good shooter.”
Not everyone peered through the same optimistic lens evaluating the spindly Guy, who floated under the radar of many major college programs. Larkins said his alma mater, Purdue, was not a fit because it already had slots filled — hello, Carsen Edwards — in which Guy would have fit.
“Virginia was a natural fit,” Larkins recalled.
“I tried to get him to Purdue. His grandfather and great grandfather are all (Indiana University) people. Kyle wanted something different. He wanted to get away, and write his own story. I think that was so much different than anyone else.
“Virginia was a great fit. When coach (Tony Bennett) came here and watched him, they were playing Lawrence North at the time. You could just see the relationship he had with Coach. It was a perfect, perfect match.”
The trust evident between Bennett and Guy paid off in a big way again Saturday. But Guy wants his original support system to know he’s taking the court for them, too, on Monday.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot the last three weeks,” Guy said. “Not just what it would mean to win a championship with these guys, but to bring it home and represent my hometown and Indiana.”
* * *
Measured and reflective, Guy comes across as vulnerable with overtones of on-court confidence. He models his openness after his coach, Bennett.
It might not have been evident to observers when Guy, who shoots 86 percent from the free throw line, sealed Virginia’s win Saturday, but he battles extreme anxiety. He looked calm. He told himself he was calm. In reality?
“I was terrified,” Guy said. “But it was a good terrified.”
Pressure typically feels like a privilege until it has buckled you.
“The best thing I could do for Kyle is I pray for him a lot,” said Bennett, who identified five biblical pillars of his program and uses faith-based teaching daily.
“I do, and I’m there for him. We have a saying: be kind because everyone you meet is facing a hard battle. Some things you have to work through with yourself and the right kind of help, and he’s very honest about it. I try to encourage him and challenge him in ways and be there for him, coach him hard.
“We always talk about encouragement and accountability — being that way with him. I constantly think about him. It’s an extended family, so you are a father figure, to an extent, to them. I think about that stuff, and I do that for me. That’s really important for him. That’s probably the best thing I could say I did.”
* * *
Historically improbable, Virginia lost to UMBC in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament. The March 16 defeat wasn’t just an upset — it was the first time a No. 16 seed knocked off a No. 1 in tournament history — it also was an emotional landmark for Guy.
At the time, it felt like a landmine. The impact settled well below the surface when the team bus required a police escort back to Virginia’s hotel in response to death threats.
Guy didn’t know where to turn. He went into a shell and tried to close himself off from society. The 20-point loss felt to Guy like a nightmare from which he couldn’t, and seemingly wouldn’t, escape.
Fighting out of the pit wouldn’t be a point-to-point venture.
Anxiety medication. Sports psychology. Sessions with Bennett. All of it helped. Nothing cured Guy.
He wrote himself a series of letters and ultimate liberation came through a social media post. Guy poured out his heart and soul into the emotion-charged writing at the behest of fiancee Alexa Jenkins.
“When that final buzzer sounded, I cracked. I cracked and the pressure got to me,” Guy wrote in a Facebook post 39 days after the UMBC loss, unwinding and expelling almost 2,500 words of pulverized anguish.
“If you know me or read my last passage you know I do not believe pressure is real, unless you let it be real. Pressure comes from thinking too much about the future or past so there can be such thing as no pressure if you just be where your feet are. Well I was right where my feet were but my mind raced to the past, the future, and the present. It was too much. I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of sadness, anxiety, and failure. All the sensations of that exact moment consumed me and I was no longer in control of my emotions.”
* * *
Writing became a necessary form of therapy. He shared, he asked and listened. And most important to Guy, he refused to forget. It didn’t take away the shame and the sting is still there — but it is now suspended intentionally by the 21-year-old.
His cellphone wallpaper and Twitter avatar are still set to the March 16, 2018, loss to UMBC. Soon enough, Guy says he’ll let it go. And if you wonder how often a 21-year-old college athlete checks a cellphone — “a lot.”
“It still stings every time I look at it,” he said.
But Guy crept out of his shell. He firmly believes a hand guided him here, to Minneapolis, to Monday night, to the precipice of a story of overcoming failure by refusing to repeat history.
It helped that when he felt like he was drowning a year ago, his mom reminded him his lifeguard walked on water.
He felt an unspeakable presence on the Virginia team outing — white-water rafting, the high-class kind that might not be a wise choice for someone battling anxiety — and an unshakable calm that emerges in-game with a smile that stretches to his earlobes.
“In a way, it’s a painful gift,” Bennett said of how the UMBC loss propelled Virginia to this point.
“It did draw us nearer to each other as a team. I think it helped us as coaches. I think it helped the players on the court and helped us in the other areas that rely on things that were significant. I knew it was going to be a really important marked year for all of us in our lives, and it’s certainly playing out that way.”
* * *
That echo helped carry Guy in this very NCAA Tournament, when he endured a shooting slump from 3-point range — 3 of 29 — that put the Cavaliers in peril in two of their first three games. Then came the regional final. Guy collected 21 points after halftime, 25 in all, and Virginia bounced Purdue to reach the Final Four.
Six points in the final 10 seconds on Saturday is now the string of splash plays Guy can recall when he rewinds his journey on and off the court.
“I think all of my life has led to this. Everything that I’ve been through made it a lot easier to hone in and try to knock down the free throws,” Guy said Sunday. “I said that I was terrified. It was a good terrified, though, a good nervousness in my stomach like, ‘This is my chance.’”
The climactic final chapter comes Monday.
Pressure is a privilege Guy would never consider passing on this time around. Imagining scissors fitted around his fingers to trim the nets hanging at U.S. Bank Stadium won’t bring anxiety Sunday night or Monday. Even knowing Texas Tech could be the team climbing the ladders to celebrate becoming champions brings a peaceful smile to Guy’s face.
“Every player and coach on every team has envisioned it, I’m sure,” he said. “But I think it’s important to realize that you don’t get to skip the game and just go down and cut the nets. We’ve got to focus on what’s in front of us. We’ve got to practice (Sunday) … and just focus. We’re excited.”
–By Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun is seen in an undated NASA artist’s concept illustration. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout/File Photo
April 6, 2019
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape.
The U.S. National Science Foundation has scheduled a news conference in Washington to announce a “groundbreaking result from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project,” an international partnership formed in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole.
Simultaneous news conferences are scheduled in Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo.
A black hole’s event horizon, one of the most violent places in the universe, is the point of no return beyond which anything – stars, planets, gas, dust, all forms of electromagnetic radiation including light – gets sucked in irretrievably.
While scientists involved in the research declined to disclose the findings ahead of the formal announcement, they are clear about their goals.
“It’s a visionary project to take the first photograph of a black hole. We are a collaboration of over 200 people internationally,” astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, said at a March event in Texas.
The news conference is scheduled for 9 a.m. (1300 GMT) on Wednesday.
The research will put to the test a scientific pillar – physicist Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, according to University of Arizona astrophysicist Dimitrios Psaltis, project scientist for the Event Horizon Telescope. That theory, put forward in 1915, was intended to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces.
SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES
The researchers targeted two supermassive black holes.
The first – called Sagittarius A* – is situated at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, possessing 4 million times the mass of our sun and located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
The second – called M87 – resides at the center of the neighboring Virgo A galaxy, boasting a mass 3.5 billion times that of the sun and located 54 million light-years away from Earth. Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles.
Black holes, coming in a variety of sizes, are extraordinarily dense entities formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes are the largest kind, devouring matter and radiation and perhaps merging with other black holes.
Psaltis described a black hole as “an extreme warp in spacetime,” a term referring to the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time joined into a single four-dimensional continuum.
Doeleman said the project’s researchers obtained the first data in April 2017 from a global network of telescopes. The telescopes that collected that initial data are located in the U.S. states of Arizona and Hawaii as well as Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica. Since then, telescopes in France and Greenland have been added to the network.
The scientists also will be trying to detect for the first time the dynamics near the black hole as matter orbits at near light speeds before being swallowed into oblivion.
The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists will be looking for a ring of light – radiation and matter circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon – around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole’s shadow or silhouette.
Einstein’s theory, if correct, should allow for an extremely accurate prediction of the size and shape of a black hole.
“The shape of the shadow will be almost a perfect circle in Einstein’s theory,” Psaltis said. “If we find it to be different than what the theory predicts, then we go back to square one and we say, ‘Clearly, something is not exactly right.’”
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Source: OANN
I sometimes think that the free market concept is treated like The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’s Quasimodo in the long novel of global economic history.
It is considered ugly and undesirable by most people who judge it at a mere glance without bothering to understand it. It is a bogeyman; a scapegoat for numerous societal problems that it has nothing to do with. In reality, the only time free markets do cause trouble is when they are manipulated or misused by elitists seeking to turn them into something other than free markets. And, even when free markets display their great value and internal beauty, many still prefer other systems that are intrinsically corrupt but flashier on the surface.
There are many reasons behind this persistent attitude. However, they are not coincidental or natural. Human beings actually tend to gravitate toward free markets over and over again in history, and away from centralized government interference and dominance in economic trade. But whenever they do, they get hammered down by the-powers-that-be. In our modern era, establishment elites have chosen to be more subtle (for now) and dissuade people from free markets through disinformation and propaganda.
To break it all down to a simple observation – Whenever disaster strikes economically, free markets are blamed. Whenever something is fixed, even if that fix is a temporary band-aid on a sucking chest wound, government involvement and socialism are applauded.And so the cycle continues until free markets become a pariah with no place in our world and centralization becomes the prevailing answer to everything.
Free market trade is ever present at a local level and always has been. But, those who favor globalism are hell-bent on putting an end to any and all private unregulated commerce forever.
Before the increased lockdown in the 20th century, domestic trade in the U.S. was loosely regulated, if at all. The income tax didn’t exist, except for a trial run during the Civil War which was eventually repealed. There was no permanent central bank managed by unaccountable elites arbitrarily dictating interest rates or inflating the economy through asset purchases. Businesses were formed around partnerships which were limited in their scope, and while government grants and aid were afforded to some of these partnerships (as during the construction of the transcontinental railroad), these grants or bonds had an expiration date set for the moment the job was completed. At that point, the partnerships were dissolved and the company heads were expected to pay back the government on the grants given.
This is not to say that corruption in business did not exist pre-20th century; it certainly did. And in most cases this corruption was fueled by collusion between business moguls and government officials. Without the aid of government (the opposite of free markets) such criminal companies and monopolies cannot exist.
The suppression of free markets began in the aftermath of the Civil War and the passage of the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the citizenship rights of former slaves, but was instead used as a legal loophole by the elite to establish what we now know as “corporations”.
Corporations are defined by their corporate charter, which is granted by the government, as well as their “corporate personhood” derived from the exploitation of the 14th Amendment. Corporate personhood allowed for limited liability as well as many other government protections. Unlike partnerships, leaders of corporations cannot in many cases be prosecuted criminally and their personal assets are protected if those crimes were executed by “the company”. There are exceptions in history, but how often do you see corporate CEO’s prosecuted and suffer anything more than a slap on the wrist?
The company can be sued as a “legal person” in civil court, or fined by the government, but in general CEO’s and major shareholders are protected from any consequences, even if they were directly involved in the commission of a crime.
This relationship between government and corporations has become so egregious that today these monopolies receive special legal protections and immunity from some civil lawsuits, aid in the form of taxpayer funded welfare, massive tax cuts which smaller businesses and less connected corporations do not enjoy, and even central bank bailouts which keep them afloat. Major corporations are not allowed to fail, and no one is allowed to compete with them on a level playing field.
This is the exact antithesis to free markets. This is socialism. Yet many socialists point the finger at free market “capitalism” as the source of all our economic problems. This is impossible, because free markets on a level any higher than local trade do not exist today and have not existed for at least a century.
Another often misrepresented part of the free market mythos is that free markets are amoral creations that must be allowed to evolve without any oversight or conscience. This claim is sometimes made by a subset of people who say they are free market activists, but do not understand free markets in the slightest.
A soulless economic model is not what “Wealth of Nations” writer Adam Smith originally envisioned. Smith was a staunch advocate of an inherent moral compass as a guide for society. He was also highly distrustful of elitist philosophy, and saw it as a control mechanism designed to convince the public that their everyday experiences and instinctual judgments were “inadequate”; meaning, people should set aside their voice of conscience and let the system tell them what they should think and do.
What Smith asserted was that while people often act in their own best interest, they will generally do so while still adhering to a universal moral compass. They will seek success through hard work and endeavor (as they should be allowed to do), but the notion that people will naturally destroy everything and everyone around them in the process unless they are heavily governed is a propaganda argument with no basis in reality. This claim persists today and is still the primary argument used against freedom in trade.
There is a group of people that do behave in a destructive way automatically or instinctually when engaging in commerce without regulation, and these people have become a fascination of mine. They are narcissistic sociopaths; the defining characteristic of most financial and political elites.
I have outlined the facts surrounding narcissistic sociopaths in numerous articles, and I recommend readers study these for greater details. To summarize, full blown narcissistic sociopathy is a psychological aberration present in around 1% of any given population from birth. That is to say, in most cases these people are not created by their environment. Many of them come from very balanced and sheltered childhoods. They are born the way they are.
Narcissistic sociopaths are a tiny portion of the population, but lacking any sense of empathy or conscience, they account for a vast percentage of all crimes committed in society. They also gravitate to positions of power and influence from the business world to politics.
Most of the criticisms of Smith’s model for free markets revolve around the crimes of corporations (which are anti-free market) as well as the immoral behavior of narcissistic sociopaths. When one applies the free market idea to normal people, it works. When one applies it to narcissistic sociopaths, it doesn’t. My question is this – Is the best solution to remove free markets for everyone? Or, is the best solution to remove narcissistic sociopaths from positions of power and influence within free markets?
Establishment elites want us to believe that the former solution is the only solution, and with good reason. All centralization starts with economic centralization. Trade is the lifeblood of civilization, and if you can control the mechanisms of trade, you can potentially control an entire nation, or even the entire world. Free markets are a cure for the cancer of corporatism and socialism, and all they require is that people start participating in commerce without the consent or oversight of government. This is a difficult thing to stop when it gets started.
This is why the establishment is so obsessed with converting to a cashless society in which every transaction no matter how small is tracked and vetted. This is why governments are enacting harsher and harsher penalties for anyone doing business without their explicit approval. This is why government taxation and regulation is making small business ventures more difficult. And, it is why law enforcement officers are being encouraged by bureaucrats to write tickets punishing children selling lemonade on street corners. We are being conditioned to avoid attempting free market trade.
The final and most prolific attack on free markets is the use of the “greater enemy” and the “greater good” as props to undermine positive views of free markets. For example, a common argument against free markets relies on the idea that if people are allowed to pursue commerce unregulated, they would devour the Earth’s resources and destroy it in the process. While we have already seen some of the environmental damage done by the corporatocracy and the sociopathic people that control it, most of these crimes go unpunished despite considerable regulation.
How long have companies like Monsanto operated with impunity under the protection of government? Only recently in civil courts has this company finally had to pay for some of its crimes. But will a single Monsanto CEO or major shareholder go to jail for poisoning the ecosystem or giving people cancer? I doubt it.
The claim of the socialists and environmentalists that more government will save us from bad corporate practices is observably not true. Government and corporations work together to protect their fellow narcissistic sociopaths. More government means more corporate and elitist power. There is not a socialist nation on the planet that has not suffered this outcome.
I agree with Adam Smith in the idea that normal citizens will act to pursue success, but also to pursue balance. When given the opportunity to actually function within a true free market, most people are not going to destroy their surrounding environment and resources in some mad dash for gain. Why? Because it is in their self-interest not to. They know that if they abuse the structures around them they will lose their source of commerce. They know that if they ruin the system for others they will be shunned in business. They also know that if they fail in such a spectacular manner and commit criminal sabotage of the free market system they will have to suffer the regret and shame that will follow.
The only factor that this does not apply to are the elites themselves; the narcissistic sociopaths devoid of conscience with whom we now contend for our freedoms. I would suggest that Smith’s free markets, unshackled from centralization and government interference, would function almost perfectly if these people were cut from the equation entirely.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: A man walks in front of the Brazil’s state-run Petrobras oil company headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes/File photo
April 5, 2019
By Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery
SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A consortium led by France’s Engie SA submitted the highest offer for a major gas pipeline unit owned by Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the state-run oil firm said on Friday, as the company’s biggest divestment draws to a close.
In a filing, Petrobras, as the company is known, said the Engie consortium, which includes Canada’s Caisse de Dépôt e Placement du Québec, presented an $8.6 billion bid for 90 percent of the TAG gas pipeline unit in northern and northeastern Brazil.
That topped offers by two competing consortia, led by Itausa Investimentos Itau SA and EIG Global Energy Partners with Mubadala Investment Co, respectively.
Two sources with knowledge of the matter said the difference between the bids was very small. The second highest bid, delivered by EIG Global Energy Partners and Mubadala Investment Company, was less than 1 percent below Engie’s bid, they said.
Engie subsidiaries in different countries account for 75 percent of the winning consortium and the Canadian pension fund the other 25 percent, one of the sources added, asking for anonymity to discuss undisclosed details.
Around 60 percent of the bid was financed by Itau Unibanco Holding SA , Banco Bradesco SA and Banco do Brasil SA .
The EIG-Mubadala group was financed by JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs. The third group, led by Brazilian holding Itausa Investimentos Itau SA, was also financed also by local banks. Banco Santander Brasil SA was Petrobras adviser on the deal.
The price tag includes the payment by the Engie group of $800 million in debts to Brazilian state development bank BNDES. At an exchange rate of 3.85 reais to $1, Petrobras said, the deal values all of TAG at 35.1 billion reais.
The divestment represents a victory for current Petrobras leadership and Chief Executive Roberto Castello Branco, who is pushing to aggressively unload assets in a bid to cut debt and refocus on exploration and production.
The sale process began in October 2017 but was interrupted last year by a Supreme Court injunction.
In September 2016, Petrobras sold a larger gas network pipeline, Nova Transportadora do Sudeste, for $5.2 billion to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP, which beat out a bid by Engie.
Petrobras will continue to distribute natural gas through the TAG system under the terms of long-term contracts, the company said in the statement.
Bloomberg reported on the TAG sale earlier on Friday.
(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo and Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro; editing by Matthew Lewis, Bill Berkrot and Sonya Hepinstall)
Source: OANN
U.S. government officials plan to meet with executives from automakers and lithium miners in early May as part of a first-of-its-kind effort to launch a national electric vehicle supply chain strategy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
While Volkswagen AG, Tesla Inc and other electric-focused automakers and battery manufacturers are expanding in the United States and investing billions in the new technology, they are reliant on mineral imports without a major push to develop more domestic mines and processing facilities. For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2Azl09N
China already dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. It produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries – compared to 5 percent for the United States – and controls most of the world’s lithium processing facilities, according to data from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, which tracks prices for lithium and other commodities and is organizing the Washington, D.C., event.
U.S. imports of lithium have nearly doubled since 2014 due in part to rising demand from Tesla, SK Innovation Co and others building battery plants in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“We need to find ways to more efficiently develop our nation’s domestic critical mineral supply because these resources are vital to both our national security and our economy,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement to Reuters when asked about the meeting.
Hoeven and Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate’s energy committee, have been invited to attend the meeting. Officials from the U.S. Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey plan to attend, according to two of the sources.
As part of the effort, Murkowski is expected to introduce standalone legislation aimed at streamlining the permitting process for lithium and other mines, bolstering state and federal studies of domestic supplies of critical minerals and encouraging mineral recycling, among other topics, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Some of those efforts were part of broader energy legislation in prior Congresses that failed, and Murkowski hopes that similar legislation will draw broader attention to the topic, according to the source.
Five companies, including Lithium Americas Corp, are developing U.S. lithium projects that plan to use new technologies to extract the metal from clays, bromine and even oilfield waste, processes not common elsewhere and considered game-changing by some analysts. But not all of them have secured financing. For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2CXdGWN
If all five come online by 2022 as planned, the country would produce at least 77,900 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent each year, making the country one of the world’s largest lithium producers. Lithium development projects have historically faced numerous obstacles, so that production number is far from guaranteed.
“Creating a domestic electric vehicle supply chain is the perfect blueprint to make America great again,” said Jesse Edmondson, chief executive officer of U.S. Critical Minerals, a start-up firm buying lithium mineral rights in the U.S. Southeast.
Representatives from Tesla, Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co plan to attend the Washington meeting and discuss with federal officials potential policy changes that could encourage development of a domestic supply chain to mine, process and supply lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for battery manufacturers and automakers, according to the sources.
Tesla and GM did not respond to requests for comment.
A Ford spokesperson said that the company regularly engages with stakeholders on various supply chain topics.
Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp, two U.S.-based companies that mine lithium in South America, also plan to attend, as do executives from the handful of lithium mines under development in the United States, according to the sources.
“We are looking forward to participating in a forum with policy makers and industry participants who are focused on ensuring the U.S. remains a leader in the development of the electric vehicle industry,” said Paul Graves, CEO of Livent, which has said it is eyeing expansion opportunities.
Albemarle, which operates the only existing lithium mine in the United States, declined to comment.
The one-day meeting will be divided into morning workshops focused on financing and permitting obstacles, with one-on-one afternoon meetings between regulators and industry executives, according to the sources.
“We’re trying to make sure policymakers have an understanding of this complex situation,” said James Calaway, chairman of ioneer Ltd, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada that also hold a large concentration of boron, used in a plethora of consumer goods.
In Arkansas, Standard Lithium Ltd is developing a pilot project to extract lithium from the bromine waste of a Lanxess AG chemical facility.
“We have an opportunity to take a huge step forward in lithium production, and we want to support that,” Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, told Reuters.
Hutchinson and some other U.S. officials want U.S. lithium projects to stand alone without financial support from the government, a potential impediment as financiers often look for even tacit government support before investing in new, unproven technologies.
“There’s a real opportunity in the electric vehicle supply chain if the United States wakes up,” said Jonathan Evans, president of Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada expected to open by 2022.
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: Brine pools from a lithium mine, that belongs U.S.-based Albemarle Corp, is seen on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert, Chile, August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photo
April 5, 2019
By Ernest Scheyder
(Reuters) – U.S. government officials plan to meet with executives from automakers and lithium miners in early May as part of a first-of-its-kind effort to launch a national electric vehicle supply chain strategy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
While Volkswagen AG, Tesla Inc and other electric-focused automakers and battery manufacturers are expanding in the United States and investing billions in the new technology, they are reliant on mineral imports without a major push to develop more domestic mines and processing facilities.
For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2Azl09N
China already dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. It produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries – compared to 5 percent for the United States – and controls most of the world’s lithium processing facilities, according to data from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, which tracks prices for lithium and other commodities and is organizing the Washington, D.C., event.
U.S. imports of lithium have nearly doubled since 2014 due in part to rising demand from Tesla, SK Innovation Co and others building battery plants in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“We need to find ways to more efficiently develop our nation’s domestic critical mineral supply because these resources are vital to both our national security and our economy,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement to Reuters when asked about the meeting.
Hoeven and Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate’s energy committee, have been invited to attend the meeting. Officials from the U.S. Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey plan to attend, according to two of the sources.
As part of the effort, Murkowski is expected to introduce standalone legislation aimed at streamlining the permitting process for lithium and other mines, bolstering state and federal studies of domestic supplies of critical minerals and encouraging mineral recycling, among other topics, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Some of those efforts were part of broader energy legislation in prior Congresses that failed, and Murkowski hopes that similar legislation will draw broader attention to the topic, according to the source.
Five companies, including Lithium Americas Corp, are developing U.S. lithium projects that plan to use new technologies to extract the metal from clays, bromine and even oilfield waste, processes not common elsewhere and considered game-changing by some analysts. But not all of them have secured financing.
For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2CXdGWN
If all five come online by 2022 as planned, the country would produce at least 77,900 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent each year, making the country one of the world’s largest lithium producers. Lithium development projects have historically faced numerous obstacles, so that production number is far from guaranteed.
“Creating a domestic electric vehicle supply chain is the perfect blueprint to make America great again,” said Jesse Edmondson, chief executive officer of U.S. Critical Minerals, a start-up firm buying lithium mineral rights in the U.S. Southeast.
Representatives from Tesla, Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co plan to attend the Washington meeting and discuss with federal officials potential policy changes that could encourage development of a domestic supply chain to mine, process and supply lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for battery manufacturers and automakers, according to the sources.
Tesla and GM did not respond to requests for comment.
A Ford spokesperson said that the company regularly engages with stakeholders on various supply chain topics.
Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp, two U.S.-based companies that mine lithium in South America, also plan to attend, as do executives from the handful of lithium mines under development in the United States, according to the sources.
“We are looking forward to participating in a forum with policy makers and industry participants who are focused on ensuring the U.S. remains a leader in the development of the electric vehicle industry,” said Paul Graves, CEO of Livent, which has said it is eyeing expansion opportunities.
Albemarle, which operates the only existing lithium mine in the United States, declined to comment.
The one-day meeting will be divided into morning workshops focused on financing and permitting obstacles, with one-on-one afternoon meetings between regulators and industry executives, according to the sources.
“We’re trying to make sure policymakers have an understanding of this complex situation,” said James Calaway, chairman of ioneer Ltd, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada that also hold a large concentration of boron, used in a plethora of consumer goods.
In Arkansas, Standard Lithium Ltd is developing a pilot project to extract lithium from the bromine waste of a Lanxess AG chemical facility.
“We have an opportunity to take a huge step forward in lithium production, and we want to support that,” Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, told Reuters.
Hutchinson and some other U.S. officials want U.S. lithium projects to stand alone without financial support from the government, a potential impediment as financiers often look for even tacit government support before investing in new, unproven technologies.
“There’s a real opportunity in the electric vehicle supply chain if the United States wakes up,” said Jonathan Evans, president of Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada expected to open by 2022.
(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Amran Abocar and Edward Tobin)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a leader of India’s main opposition Congress party and sister of the party president Rahul Gandhi, waves to her supporters after addressing an election campaign meeting in Ayodhya, India March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar/File Photo
April 5, 2019
By Devjyot Ghoshal
AYODHYA, India (Reuters) – Priyanka Gandhi Vadra became the latest member of India’s storied Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to enter politics in January, but the boost she brings the opposition campaign may not turn the tide against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, polls show.
After years of speculation, the charismatic Vadra joined Congress to help its leader, her brother Rahul, in general elections that begin next week, pitching the party and regional groups against Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led alliance.
Congress hopes the fourth-generation siblings of a dynasty that ruled India for decades after independence from Britain in 1947 and is still revered by many will help energize its ranks and counter Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In the run-up to the election that starts on Thursday, the 47-year-old Vadra has spent hours campaigning in cars, trucks and even a boat, to woo voters in northern Uttar Pradesh, which sends more lawmakers to parliament than any other Indian state.
Reuters followed her at two roadshows where she smiled, waved, and shook hands, occasionally wading into crowds as her security detail scrambled along. Her father and grandmother, both former prime ministers, were assassinated.
Thousands of people lined the streets for several kilometers, waving Congress flags and chanting her name.
“There is support for Congress because of Priyanka,” said Mahesh Gupta, a shopkeeper in the temple town of Ayodhya, where she visited a shrine in late March.
Gupta, who referred to Vadra by her first name, as many Indians do, voted for Modi in the last election, but said he was considering Congress after seeing her campaign.
Ayodhya is at the heart of decades of tension between Hindus and minority Muslims, as Hindu groups led by the BJP have campaigned for a temple to the god-king Rama to be built on the site of a mosque razed to the ground by Hindu zealots in 1992.
Vadra, a marquee campaigner for Congress, chose Ayodhya as one of her first tours to take on the BJP in its own bastion.
Even so, in the face of the formidable political machine of the BJP which also rules the state, Congress may be unable to capitalize on her appeal, pollsters and some party leaders said.
Vadra’s campaigning was getting attention for Congress it would not have got otherwise, but it did not look like the party was making gains, said Milan Vaishnav, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Many in Congress say the Priyanka play is more about building up the party for 2022 assembly elections and beyond,” he said, referring to state elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Last month, polling agencies CVoter and CNX separately estimated Congress would win just 4 of the 80 seats up for grabs in the state, doubling its tally since the last general election in 2014.
That year’s sweep of 71 seats for the BJP paved the way for Modi’s clear majority in India’s 545-member lower house of parliament.
A broader poll published by the Hindu newspaper on Friday showed Modi’s approval ratings across India were higher even than in 2014, when he was making a bid for power.
The poll, by the Hindu CSDS-Lokniti, showed 43 percent of respondents wanted Modi as the next prime minister, with 24 percent for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
VOTE WISELY
For years, Vadra helped manage elections for her brother and mother, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in their own constituencies, but was reluctant to get into politics herself.
A mother of two, she is married to businessman Robert Vadra, and has long been seen as a natural politician with strong speaking skills and an ability to easily connect with people.
One afternoon last week, her 12-car convoy sped past lush fields and small settlements, kicking up a cloud of dust before stopping at the village of Atka in the Ayodhya district.
The saree-clad Vadra jumped out of her car and settled down on the ground surrounded by a group of women, many veiled and others smiling.
“If someone doesn’t work for you, how will you teach them a lesson?” she asked, imploring them to vote wisely. “Vote for those who want to work for you.”
CVoter, which has run a daily opinion poll since January, said Congress support in Uttar Pradesh has dropped off after jumping 10 percentage points in the days following the news that Vadra had taken a party post.
Late in March, about 8.9 percent of state voters backed Congress, a far cry from the 43.4 percent supporting the BJP and the 44 percent behind an alliance of two major regional parties.
However, even with Vadra’s hectic campaigning, Congress is struggling to get its message of welfare to voters, party officials said.
Six voters in Uttar Pradesh said they had not heard of a Congress election promise for a program to give India’s poorest families monthly handouts of 6,000 rupees.
“They brought her in at a very wrong time,” said one Congress official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak formally to media.
A better time would have been December, just days after Congress won power in three key states, giving her more time to prepare, he added. Others in the party have said it should have been years earlier.
The BJP has dismissed Vadra’s formal entry into politics as inconsequential and Modi said it only showed that for some “the family is the party”.
Vadra’s office did not respond to a request from Reuters for an interview.
But Congress will seize on momentum building against the BJP, said Kamal Nath, a top Congress leader and chief minister of the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
“You have to time everything,” he told Reuters. “You don’t want to peak out too fast.”
(Additional reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Clarence Fernandez)
Source: OANN
Activists attend a protest against the legislation that would open Wilderness in Alaska to oil drilling on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
April 5, 2019
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Opponents of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are lining up in Alaska and in Washington, calling the White House’s efforts to open up the land “ecologically unsound.”
Those against oil development in the ANWR coastal plain say the territory deserves protection from oil rigs, pipelines and roads that crisscross the rest of Alaska’s North Slope. ANWR had been off-limits to drilling for more than four decades before a Republican-passed tax bill in 2017.
The Trump administration has said it wants to hold a lease sale by year-end, which would meet the administration’s aim of speeding up environmental review before drilling.
Drilling opponents spoke at a March 25 hearing before the Democratic-led U.S. House Natural Resources Committee.
The opponents include Alaska Natives, environmentalists and scientists who say the varied terrain is a poor fit for industrial travel on ice roads needed for development, and that the refuge has taken on increased importance due to sea ice loss that has caused polar bears to migrate inland.
“We believe such development is ecologically unsound and cannot be accomplished while also harboring the original purposes for which the Arctic Refuge was established and is still managed today,” a group of more than 300 scientists and resource managers wrote in a March 7 letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the agency in charge of ANWR leasing.
The Trump administration has made energy dominance a key plank of economic development and foreign policy influence. U.S. oil production has surpassed 12 million barrels of oil a day, making it the world’s biggest crude producer.
Alaska’s production has dwindled to about 500,000 bpd from a peak of 2 million bpd in 1988. Industry interest in ANWR is unclear; it has been tested only once for the potential to extract fossil fuels.
The area is important for wildlife, most notably as the calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which roams northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada. Canadian governments and tribes oppose ANWR development in large part because of threats to the herd, the subject of a 1987 U.S.-Canada treaty.
“If you drill in this sacred place it will destroy the caribou and therefore destroy the Gwich’in,” Dana Tizya-Tramm, chief of the Vuntut Gwitch’in First Nation in Canada’s Yukon Territory, told the House committee. Gwich’in Athabascans live along the Alaska-Canada border, and their culture is tied to the caribou.
However, the Inupiat of the North Slope, another indigenous group, supports ANWR development. The tax base from development is needed for “running water, reliable power, local education and improved health care,” said Richard Glenn, vice president of the Inupiat-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corp, at the House hearing.
The U.S. Department of the Interior came under fire for continuing to plan for ANWR meetings during the government shutdown in January – an example, opponents say, of the White House rushing the process.
Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a longtime proponent of ANWR drilling, told Reuters she does not think the process is being rushed.
“We have a lot of process to go through,” she said. “We’ve got a ways to go and some time to do it, and I think we’ll do it right.”
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage, Alaska; additional reporting by David Gaffen; editing by xxx)
Source: OANN
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