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Trump claims Saudi Arabia agreed to oil production hike, Riyadh doesn’t confirm

June 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

“Just spoke to King Salman of Saudi Arabia and explained to him that, because of the turmoil disfunction (sic) in Iran and Venezuela, I am asking that Saudi Arabia increase oil production, maybe up to 2,000,000 barrels, to make up the difference… Prices to (sic) high! He has agreed!” Trump tweeted early on Saturday.

Trump was vague about whether the two-million-barrel increase would be per day. If so, such a boost would be significant for the country’s oil production, which hit 10.03 million barrels per day (bpd) in May. It would far surpass the previous high of 10.72 bpd from November 2016.

Saudi Arabia – the world’s largest oil exporter – confirmed on Saturday that Trump spoke with King Salman by phone, and that the two discussed the need to preserve “stability” in the oil market and efforts of oil-producing countries to compensate for any potential shortage.

However, Riyadh did not reference anything related to a two-million-barrel increase, leading to questions about whether Trump’s tweet was an exaggeration, wishful thinking, a business strategy, or yet another “Trumpism.”

The president’s citation of high prices and “turmoil and dysfunction” in Iran and Venezuela has raised eyebrows among critics who have pointed to his own actions as causes.

Oil prices have indeed been affected by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and to impose sanctions blocking American and most European countries from doing business with Iran. Trump is urging US allies to end all purchases of Iranian oil by November 4. 

In Venezuela, Trump’s sanctions have accelerated the sharp decline in its oil production. 

Earlier this month, however, the US president pointed the finger elsewhere, blaming the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for high oil prices.

Trump’s tweet follows a Bloomberg report earlier this week, which said that state oil company Saudi Aramco is aiming to boost production next month to about 10.8 million barrels per day, citing unnamed sources. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih also said earlier in June that Riyadh would “do whatever is necessary to keep the market in balance.” 

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/431352-trump-saudi-oil-increase/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

For Local Newspapers, Angry Readers Are a Given. But Killings Send Shivers.

June 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Kathy Best, the editor of the Missoulian and Ravalli Republic newspapers in Montana, recalled that when a reporter wrote about a man who had pleaded guilty to intimidating a library employee, the man “created websites in the reporter’s name, with a photo of a tombstone.”

“When your newspaper is covering a community, it’s a much more intimate relationship that you have with readers,” Ms. Best added. “And they let you know, up close and personal, when they’re unhappy with what you do.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists is known more for tracking press freedom around the world, but last year, with political divisions deepening and President Trump labeling the news media the “enemy of the American people,” it began documenting attacks on journalists in the United States. Since then, the organization has documented physical violence directed at more than 60 journalists, especially those covering protests.

In an article published Friday, Kyle Pope, the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, wrote about his experience as an editor of a weekly in Manhattan. A disgruntled woman, whom Mr. Pope described as a “neighborhood eccentric,” was upset about an article describing her as a hoarder who had threatened her neighbors.

Before the article was published, the woman showed up at the offices, he wrote, “angry and incoherent and demanding to speak to our reporter.” The situation was defused without violence, as most are across the country, but in the wake of Thursday’s shooting, it gave Mr. Pope pause.

“Local newsrooms are accessible for a reason — it’s part of what makes them integral to the life of their communities,” Mr. Pope wrote. “People come in to buy ads. Readers bring in photos of their kids’ sports teams. Tipsters drop by with gossip.

“It is heartbreaking, but necessary, to recognize that the openness that defines local news likely carries too high a risk; local newsrooms, at least for now, may have no choice but to fortify themselves.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/media/capital-gazette-shooting-local-newspapers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Fly me to the moon: Tickets to space going on sale in 2019

June 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The company expects its New Shepard suborbital vehicle to carry the first space tourists to orbit in 2019, according to Blue Origin Senior Vice President Rob Meyerson. The top manager hasn’t provided any details on ticket prices.

“We plan to start flying our first test passengers soon,” said Blue Origin senior vice president Rob Meyerson, as quoted by Space News. “We expect to start selling tickets in 2019.”

Back to earth, Bezos! Amazon chief under fire for space travel plans as workers struggle

The announcement followed a video presentation of a previous New Shepard flight at the company’s West Texas test site. So far, all the test flights carried by the rocket have been without people on board with the firm pledging to fly company personnel on the vehicle in later tests.

The aerospace company, founded in 2000, is financed by 53-year-old Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company is reportedly swiftly catching up with its rival – Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

However, there is still a significant gap between the companies’ capabilities. Rockets manufactured by SpaceX are currently capable of taking astronauts and cargos to the International Space Station (ISS), while Blue Origin’s New Shepard is still more like a rocket-powered observation deck.

New Shepard’s crew capsule was put on display last year after Blue Origin managed to conduct several un-crewed test flights to space and back. According to the company, the capsule is able to carry passengers to an altitude of more than 60km (37 miles) above the Earth, so they experience a few minutes of weightlessness as well as observe the curvature of the planet set against the blackness of space.

Apart from technologic rivalry, the Bezos-led firm also competes with Musk for SpaceX’s primary customers, such as NASA and the US Air Force. SpaceX has just won a $130 million contract to launch its AFSC-52 military satellite into orbit, beating the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic subsidiary is Bezos’s other rival, albeit more direct. Virgin said it sold about 650 tickets for its fully commercial suborbital flights, which are now booked until at least 2021.

Space tourism has turned into a hot commodity over recent decades. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has entered the prospective business through funding Seattle-based Spaceflight, which is reportedly booking payloads on flights. The company has also brought up the capacity of a SpaceX rocket that can be shared by paying customers.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/431342-bezos-selling-tickets-space/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Switzerland chooses gold bullion over paper wealth backed by US dollar

June 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Currency war can end global US dollar dominance those who own gold have power

“The Swiss government Pension System decided to change from paper gold in the amount of 700 million CHF into physical gold and store it in Switzerland. The 700 million only stands for 2 percent of the total assets, but it is quite a surprise that they do this,” Claudio Grass, an independent precious metals advisor and Mises Ambassador told RT.com.

According to Grass, it is a strong signal that people should take seriously, since a pension fund is an investment vehicle that has a long-term strategy.

“Physical gold is the best way to hedge as well as to accumulate wealth over decades. If you would have purchased for $100,000 gold in mid 70ties the holding without doing anything would be worth more than $2 million,” the analyst said. Another factor why the pension fund demanded physical gold was that they understand that paper gold just represents a claim on gold in a highly paper-leveraged gold market, Grass explained.

“It makes common sense under the actual circumstances to assure it is stored in the home country, Switzerland, instead of London or the US, which reminds me of the central bank repatriation,” the analyst added.

Small Asian nation dumps dollar yuan for gold amid growing global trade hostilities

Grass adds that countries are noting the geopolitical shift from West to East and that is why they are buying more real gold instead of the US dollar-based papers.

“The last geopolitical shift that started with WWI and ended with WWII, put the US in a dominant position and it owned and stored 70 percent of the gold reserves of the free world. This is also one of the main reasons why the US won the Empire over from the Brits. Now we can witness another geopolitical power shift, with the rise of the East,” he said.

The global debt burden continues to grow, while more than 65 percent of all monetary reserves on this planet are in US dollars, Grass notes. “Holding physical gold is definitely the best hedge against all sorts of fiat money risks, but from a central bank perspective it is definitely the best hedge against a weakening dollar that is on its way to reaching its intrinsic value which is zero,” he said.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/431329-switzerland-gold-paper-dollar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Wealth Matters: Can Artificial Intelligence Keep Your Home Secure?

June 29, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Silva said any security plan started with the basics — good locks, strong doors, an alarm system — and could be expanded to full perimeter screening with either monitoring enhanced with artificial intelligence or more traditional motion detectors and alarms. Celebrities and other well-known people may want to build a safe room in their homes, he said, or have their own command centers.

“Before you start prescribing medicine, you need to diagnose the condition,” Mr. Silva said. “A risk assessment is really crucial.”

Christopher Falkenberg, a former Secret Service agent and the president of Insite Risk Management, said that with threats being made so easily over social media, he needed to help clients control their personal information and who had access to it.

He said his firm used existing technology and had created some of its own programs to track what was being said about clients online.

“We used to be concerned with a small circle of people with information about you — the gardeners, the people who were on the property,” Mr. Falkenberg said. “We can’t vet all the people online the way we used to vet the gardener. We have to talk to clients about controlling the information that they personally put out there.”

At a minimum, what any security program hopes to do is make a home less attractive to criminals.

“We’ll never reduce the crime rate in East Hampton or Greenwich,” Mr. Falkenberg said. But, he added, “if we can make it that much more difficult to target our people, we’ll have achieved our goal.”

A few months ago, Mr. Manganiello and Ms. Vergara’s home was targeted again. But this time, their new system from Edgeworth with geofencing technology and A.I.-enabled cameras detected three men before they could get close to the house.

“As they were trying to figure out where to come in, the command center was guiding the police to our house,” Mr. Manganiello said. “They were able to apprehend them and their getaway driver before they could even touch the house.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/your-money/artificial-intelligence-home-security.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money

BBC Apologizes to Carrie Gracie, Former China Editor, Over Unequal Pay

June 29, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The dispute between the BBC and Ms. Gracie, a longtime journalist with the broadcaster, stems from her time as China editor. When she took the role in 2013, she was told that she would be paid in line with the BBC’s North America editor, Jon Sopel. But data published by the broadcaster last summer showed they were paid significantly different amounts.

For the year that ended in March 2017, Mr. Sopel was paid between 200,000 and 249,999 pounds. Ms. Gracie made less than the £150,000 threshold required to make her salary public, and later said her salary was £135,000.

Her resignation from the post of China editor drew attention to the pay gaps.

Several BBC journalists spoke out in her favor, the salaries of some of the broadcaster’s most prominent male journalists were cut, and at a parliamentary hearing on the matter, one lawmaker described the situation as a “horror show.”

“Today, at the BBC, I can say I am equal,” Ms. Gracie, reading prepared remarks, said on Friday.

“I would like women at workplaces up and down the country to say the same,” she added.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/media/bbc-gender-pay-carrie-gracie.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

‘We Are Putting Out a Damn Paper’: Capital Gazette Journalists Kept Working After Fatal Shooting

June 29, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The Capital newspaper published a 40-page edition on Friday. The headline across the front page, “5 shot dead at The Capital,” was just below photographs of the five people killed — Gerald Fischman, 61, the editorial page editor; Rob Hiaasen, 59, an editor and features columnist; John McNamara, 56, a sports reporter and editor for the local weekly papers; Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant; and Wendi Winters, 65, a local news reporter and community columnist.

In a newsroom of about 20 people, the work required to publish the paper was a team effort. The lead article about the shooting listed 10 staff members in the byline. Inside the newspaper, the pages were filled with details about the suspected gunman, the news organization’s origins in the 1720s and profiles on the five people who died.

On Page 8, there were two stories that, on any other day, might have filled the front page. Mr. Davis wrote about a former Army medic who was a double amputee who had died in a paddling accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Another reporter, Rachel Pacella, wrote about a ceremony she attended on Thursday morning for new midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. It included a photograph by Mr. McKerrow.

Over the past 26 years, the following page in Friday’s edition usually included an editorial by Mr. Fischman, known for his sharp but fair opinions as the voice of the editorial page. But Mr. Fischman was among the dead, and the page was largely left blank except for a small block of text in the middle.

“Today, we are speechless,” it said, listing the names of the five people who had died. “Tomorrow this page will return to its steady purpose of offering our readers informed opinion about the world around them, that they might be better citizens.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/media/gazette-shooting-newspaper.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

China Taps the Brakes on Its Global Push for Influence

June 29, 2018 by Leave a Comment

This year, some Chinese officials have expressed some concerns about lending under the program.

“Ensuring debt sustainability — that is very important,” Yi Gang, the new governor of China’s central bank, said at a conference in Beijing in late April.

While Belt and Road activity remains huge, it has certainly become more restrained, according to official data. In the first five months of 2018, Chinese companies signed contracts worth $36.2 billion in business, down nearly 6 percent from the same period a year ago.

Deal signings were down at this time last year from 2016, too, though by a lesser magnitude. Much of that downturn stemmed from big companies and governments’ saving their powder for a major Belt and Road forum held in May 2017 in Beijing that was attended by Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other major political figures. After the forum, activity surged.

“I sensed that the level of enthusiasm about B.R.I. had certainly shifted down a few notches relative to last year,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell economist and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division who recently visited Beijing and had extensive conversations with Chinese financial policymakers.

Project activity could pick up later this year, of course. But an uncertain global economic outlook has given Beijing even more reasons to be cautious.

A protracted trade war between the United States and other countries, particularly China, could shake confidence and stunt growth. The United States has pushed up short-term interest rates, making it more costly to borrow money. In the past, interest rate increases in the United States have sometimes caused financial turbulence elsewhere, especially in emerging markets.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/china-belt-and-road-slows.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News

She Knows How to Make an Exit. You’re Reading It.

June 29, 2018 by Leave a Comment

I have also had — it is much-needed leavening — the delicious, often downright campy pleasure of telling the stories of people who cast the form of midcentury material culture. Among my favorites is the wonderfully named Massachusetts sculptor Don Featherstone, who, be he saint or sinner, shaped the postwar suburban landscape by inventing the lawn flamingo.

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Don Featherstone in a field of his pink flamingos.CreditSeth Resnick/Science Faction, via Corbis

As I wrote: “Mr. Featherstone had not contemplated creating an enduring emblem of kitsch in 1957, when his first flamingo sailed off the assembly line, or the next year, when the bird was brought to market. A recent art-school graduate, he was simply heeding career advice that would become a sardonic watchword for young people: ‘Plastics.’”

Also in this deeply pleasurable vein were obits for the inventors of the Frisbee, the Pet Rock, Etch A Sketch (which was given the most wonderful headline design ever to grace a news obituary), Stove Top stuffing and the crash-test dummy. One of my favorite assignments ever was the obit of Leslie Buck, who invented the Anthora, the blue-and-white Greek-themed cardboard cup from which generations of Gothamites drank their coffee — and without which a bevy of New York cop shows would not look remotely the same.

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The single greatest reward of writing obits, I have learned, is the chance to touch history. This was brought forcibly home to me in 2013, when I reported the obituary of a man named Tom Christian. Mr. Christian was the longtime chief radio operator on Pitcairn Island, responsible for keeping that speck of rock in the Pacific in contact with the world. As might be expected for someone from that place with that name, he was a direct descendant — the great-great-great-grandson — of the Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian.

In reporting news obits, it is our policy to speak, whenever possible, with our subjects’ families. On The Times’s nickel, I dialed Pitcairn, nearly 6,000 miles from New York. I got a connection clear as crystal, and reached Mr. Christian’s daughter, who gave me (in a lilting accent that to my uneducated ears sounded pure New Zealand) the biographical details I sought.

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Tom Christian, a great-great-great-grandson of Fletcher Christian, who led the mutiny on the British ship Bounty in 1789.CreditNeil Tweedie/The Daily Telegraph UK

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/insider/obituary-writer-margalit-fox-retires.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Pass the peace pipe: US promises Germany to leave Russian gas pipeline alone

June 29, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The ministry’s spokesperson said Germany opposed sanctions with extraterritorial effect but, in the specific case of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany, guidelines that had been provided by Washington suggested that the construction would be unaffected, Reuters reports.

US threatens to punish Russia Germany if they continue playing with gas

Earlier, Washington repeatedly voiced disapproval of the Nord Stream 2 project, pledging to introduce sanctions against European firms participating in the building of the gas pipeline. The project, led by Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, is being implemented in cooperation with German energy firms Wintershall and Uniper, French multinational Engie, British-Dutch oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell and Austrian energy company OMV.

The US administration claimed that the pipeline, aimed at delivering Russian gas to Germany, undermined Europe’s energy security and stability. The White House threatened to sanction project participants using a provision in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), approved by US Congress last summer.

The natural gas pipeline, which is of great importance for Germany along with the other EU nations, has been repeatedly opposed by smaller members of the European Union. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Hungary have severely criticized the project. On Thursday, Hungarian Foreign and Foreign Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto accused the bloc of applying double standards to Nord Stream 2.    

“We are not part of the project, we can’t resist it. But I can say there are unacceptable double standards,” the minister told Sputnik, stressing that the former South Stream project, which could provide diversification of gas supplies for Central Europe was “killed” by the EU. “And now we don’t see any encouragement on the part of the European Commission. I can’t imagine any excuses or reasons the Commission could bring,” he said.

Another Eastern European country opposed to the project has been Ukraine, which fears the pipeline may deprive its budget of transit fees.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/431286-germany-us-sanctions-nord-stream/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business
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