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Exports of Russian crude to US soared to 12-year high despite ongoing political tensions

May 30, 2021 by Leave a Comment

According to the latest data released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US’ daily imports of crude from Russia totaled nearly 23,000 million barrels, nearly doubling compared to the previous month.

Also on rt.com Oil demand set to surge as travel picks up

The surge in exports made Russia the country’s second biggest oil supplier after Canada, which shipped 139,869 million barrels per day to its neighbor. Mexico and Saudi Arabia came in third and fourth place, with daily supplies of 17,616 million barrels and 10,868 million barrels respectively.

According to the report, overall oil imports in March alone increased by 8,288 million barrels per day, or 20%. Meanwhile, the daily exports of oil saw a modest growth of 0.2%, or 7,679 million barrels.

Russia remains one of the US’ biggest strategic partners in the energy sector, despite long-standing tensions between Moscow and Washington. The White House persistently criticizes the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, warning its European allies against becoming too dependent on Russian energy supplies.

Also on rt.com US reports it has imported sanctioned oil from Iran, a first after 30 years of sanctions

After years of successively introducing sanctions against investors and companies involved in the construction of the pipeline, Washington decided to backpedal.

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden said that it was too late to stop the project, which is aiming to link Russia and Germany. The president admitted that further attacks would be “counterproductive” to relations with the US allies, as the project nears completion.

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

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/525216-russia-exports-oil-us-record/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Is this the first truly global gas price benchmark?

May 30, 2021 by Leave a Comment

One outlier has been the Netherlands, which historically is a ‘natural gas country’ due to its sizeable reserves. The medium-sized European country’s virtual trading hub Titel Transfer Facility, or TTF, is quickly becoming the global benchmark for natural gas. It is an immense asset for a country with an economy the size of the state of Florida.

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TTF was established in 2003 by the country’s TSO Gasunie to promote gas trading in the region and improve liquidity. Back then the UK’s NBP trading hub exceeded TTF by far in importance and size. Ever since trading has expanded massively making the Dutch hub a benchmark for global trade. According to Gordon Bennett, managing director for utility markets at ICE Futures Europe, traders for the TTF benchmark have increased by 164 percent since 2016. “TTF is becoming a global gas marker, it is the ‘Brent’ of the gas market. A lot more participants are coming from outside Europe.”

Several characteristics of the Dutch market have boosted TTF’s rise. The Netherlands’ enormous natural gas reserves have made it the largest producer in the EU. Without a sizeable domestic market, liquidity is hard to find. The country’s production capacity has been so large since the 1970s that major volumes have been exported to Belgium, France, Germany, and even Italy. The foundations of TTF’s success were laid decades ago when vast pipeline infrastructure was laid in northwest Europe. Therefore, the hub does not only serve the Netherlands but also neighboring countries.

Domestic reserves are dwindling in Europe which further increases the necessity for imports. Historically the majority of the EU’s foreign gas has come from Russia, Norway, and Algeria. However, the proliferation of LNG has been decisive in boosting trade. The shale revolution in the U.S. and increased LNG exports have helped bolster TTF as Europe is one of two primary buyers markets, together with East Asia. 

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The LNG revolution and TTF’s rise are closely linked. The majority of international trades used to be done through long-term oil-indexed pricing. The expanding LNG industry has provided the global natural gas market a level of flexibility and liquidity that wasn’t possible through more fixed pipeline infrastructure. 

According to Patrick Barouki, director of gas trading and origination at German utility Uniper SE, “TTF is the global gas market. Downstream liquidity is essential, showing enough use of gas, a variety of players, enabling people who are just speculating to take positions with confidence. TTF checks all the boxes.”

With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic nearing through advances in vaccination across Europe, natural gas demand will increase further. In the past couple of months, futures trading concerning Dutch gas on ICE has increased 24 percent and doubled in the past two years. 

Also on rt.com China continues ramping up natural gas production

The Japan-Korea Marker, or JKM, the benchmark for LNG prices in East Asia has also seen an increase in liquidity over the last few years. However, there isn’t nearly as much trade as TTF. Despite the recent jumps in prices in Asia, such as in January of this year, Asia-based traders have used the Dutch benchmark as an indicator for key sport rates. This includes China and India, besides Japan and South Korea.

With ever-decreasing domestic reserves and rising geopolitical tensions, expect Europeans to take measures to strengthen their energy security. This means that LNG flows can be preferred over natural gas from traditional supplier Russia which overwhelmingly uses pipelines and fixed rates. The growing use of flexible pricing and liquidity will bolster TTF even further which will cement its function as a global benchmark.

This article was originally published on Oilprice.com

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/525205-global-gas-price-benchmark/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Kendama, Sungka, Sipa and Other Asian Games Shaped Creators

May 30, 2021 by Leave a Comment

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. My parents immigrated from South Korea. My dad worked a lot when I was a child, but I have memories of him introducing us to classic games. I recall learning how to play chess on a nice wooden set with my dad describing the movements of each piece. He once surprised us by getting a large, heavy board for go and Chinese chess, which he also taught us to play. The hwatu card deck, which is used in the Korean game go stop, remains a special object for me that connects me back to my family and home. It’s one of those things that I discovered as a child while curiously poking around my mom’s cabinets. The cards are probably the first pieces of graphic design that I ever loved as a child. I never mastered the game but have always kept a deck in my desk since moving away from my parents’ home. — Caroline Oh

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia in New Jersey. My parents immigrated from South Korea, and when I was born, my grandmother immigrated as well to help raise me. I can still see the image of her playing a version of hwatu solitaire by herself in my aunt’s living room, where she would try to line up all 48 cards in their suits. My grandmother used a small towel on top of the coffee table to make it easier to pick up and flip cards. I would watch with no understanding of the rules but loved to react to her color commentary. As I get older, I always think about how challenging it must have been for my grandmother to assimilate to a new country at her older age. I think that hwatu solitaire was her way of passing the time and connecting back with her homeland in a small way. — Dan Lim

I was born and raised in California, where my parents had immigrated from the Philippines. I also feel connected to Japan, where my husband’s family lives, because I spent a few years there during my childhood. Growing up, I played a type of game known as mancala, involving counting and capturing, but I liked sungka, the Filipino version. It’s a two-player game using a long wooden board with two rows of seven small pits called bahay, which means “houses.” Each player has their own store of shells at either end, and players take turns emptying and depositing their pits to reach their store. When I visited my cousins in the Philippines for the first time, playing sungka was a way for us to get to know one another. As I asked my parents about their experiences with sungka, which is played indoors, they were more excited to tell me about traditional Filipino games they had played outside, such as tumbang preso (trying to hit a can using a flat stone or slippers) and patintero (in which players draw lines on the ground and try to prevent the other team from getting past them). Even though I’ve never played these games, just talking about them was a way to bond with my parents. — Lizelle Serrano

My parents and my mom’s family moved to Bayside, Queens, from Manila in the late ’80s. I have lived in New York my whole life. In middle school, I got weirdly obsessed with hacky sack and would play it with my friends after school. One day, my mom taught me the childhood game she used to play called sipa, which I didn’t know about but was surprisingly similar. She added that it was the “national sport of the Philippines.” She told me that she and her friends used to play growing up and would fashion sipas out of found objects and reused materials, and she showed me how to make one out of a washer and a candy wrapper. I remember being fascinated by how an object made out of simple pieces could be so cleverly engineered: Like a badminton birdie, it was capable of self-righting in midair, always landing with the washer side down to give your foot a flat surface to kick. I was so enamored at the time with this small connection between my culture growing up and my family’s. — Robert Vinluan

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/insider/asian-games-culture.html

Filed Under: Media Business

The Times’s At Home Print Section Closes as Society Reopens

May 30, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Readers received instructions on how to craft the newspaper into items like Halloween masks or piñatas, then would send in photographs of their finished projects. In some cases, the team would get dozens of pictures.

“There were a lot of great elements in the section that might lead to the possibility of a new section, or could be put to use elsewhere in the paper,” said Tom Jolly, associate masthead editor, who oversees the print newspaper.

At Home “rose to the moment, because it was a moment,” Mr. Jolly added, referring to the pandemic’s impact on everyone. “That’s one of the things that made the section unique: It was a touchstone for that experience.”

The feedback from readers — both positive and negative — continually helped the team refine its offerings. “The mental health tips are great — the list of superlatives is endless,” one reader wrote. Another was “appalled” by the plates of untouched food in a dirty sink featured on one cover.

“I love to see that circle develop where readers are seeing themselves in our coverage,” Mr. Sifton said. “And we’re seeing them and assigning coverage that allows that to continue.”

The twice-weekly digital At Home newsletter, written by Melissa Kirsch, an assistant editor for Culture and Lifestyle, will continue — it will change to At Home and Away this week and will touch on travel — as will her monitoring of the At Home inbox. Reader emails provided “a sense of the global community of people that were mostly at home during this time,” Ms. Kirsch said.

The newsletter beckons people to write in and often incorporates their musings or responses to prompts. A friendly instruction toward the bottom says, simply, “Tell us.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/insider/at-home-section-ends.html

Filed Under: Media Business

Russia’s industrial production surges over 7% in April

May 30, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Output during the first four months of the year increased by 1.1% in annual terms. 

Statistics show that production in the mining sector last month decreased by 1.8% compared to last year, down 1.4% from the previous month. Mining production between January and April was down 5.7% in annual terms. 

Meanwhile, the manufacturing industry in April grew by 14.2% on an annualized basis after increasing by 5.4% in March.

“The high growth rates over the same period of last year are partly due to the fact that a number of enterprises limited production in April 2020 as a result of the imposed restrictive measures aimed at combating the coronavirus infection,” Rosstat said.

Also on rt.com Putin outlines national priorities to restart economy raise living standards as Russia emerges from Covid crisis

“The decrease in volumes in the commodities sector totaled 1.8%. This is due to fulfillment of obligations to limit oil production under the OPEC+ deal and preventive maintenance work at infrastructure facilities in the oil and gas industry,” it added.

According to the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, there’s been a recovery in many sectors of the manufacturing industry since the beginning of the year.
“The auto industry is demonstrating very good growth rates of 13.7% in the first quarter and 41% in April,” he said.

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

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/524819-russia-industrial-production-growth/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Island Residents Protest at the Willows Inn After Workplace Allegations

May 29, 2021 by Leave a Comment

About two hours into the protest, a man and a woman came out of the restaurant and got into a heated exchange with protesters, with the man yelling an expletive at the crowd. Some protesters yelled to them, “Enjoy that exploitation” and “You have no backbone.” In response, the man said, “Prove it,” presumably referring to the accusations in the Times article.

According to three people who have worked at the restaurant, and who requested anonymity for fear of professional consequences, 10 staff members — nearly half of the total — resigned soon after that report was published; hundreds of reservations were canceled, and those customers’ deposits, usually in the realm of $500, were refunded with no comment.

Local businesses that made custom products for the Willows — Camber Coffee, Constant Crush winery and Wander Brewing — said they had immediately ended their collaborations.

Loganita Farm has long been the cornerstone of Mr. Wetzel’s claim that he cooked only with ingredients from Lummi Island. Though he often referred to Loganita as “our” farm, it has never been part of the Willows and is separately owned by Steve McMinn, a former Willows investor.

In a phone interview, Mr. McMinn said he sympathized with the former employees but considered the protest “a tempest in a teapot.” He said Loganita would continue to grow vegetables for the restaurant. “I like producing local ingredients and local jobs,” he said.

Mary von Krusenstiern, the head farmer, worked on the farm for nine years and has lived in the area her whole life. Although Loganita was not implicated in any of the sourcing allegations, she resigned a few days after the allegations were published.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/dining/willows-inn-protests-lummi-island.html

Filed Under: Small Business

The ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Author Finishes What She Started (and Restarted)

May 29, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Exactly. And that’s what it’s like writing fan fiction. It’s so funny because I’m now in Clubhouse. I love it. And there’s lots of authors talking in groups and what have you, and you see the difference between pantsters and plotters. You know, people who plot things out, or people who fly by the seat of their pants. I’m a complete fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. I’ve got a vague idea of where I’m going, not sure if I’m going to get there.

When did you join Clubhouse? What do you do on there?

Probably, maybe, March, April or maybe February of this year, but because time has no meaning anymore, that’s the way it goes. Is it Thursday? Is it Saturday? Who knows! So some time this year, and I’ve been on there for at least two months. It took me a long time to actually speak up, because I’m incredibly shy. There’s a fantastic community of authors. And there’s a bunch of magicians and comedians that I talk to as well. They’re hilarious. A friend of mine, she’s a standup comedian, and she was in Clubhouse, and I was a bit mischievous about it, but I followed her into this room, and it was full of magicians and comedians. What better company?

What do you make of the impact that your books have had on publishing, after they helped bring more intense erotic romance into the mainstream?

It constantly surprises me. I will always be surprised by this kind of aberration. I would have been delighted to sell 5,000 books, and I thought I’d carry on working in telly and doing all that stuff, and, you know, living my life peacefully and what have you, and it’s completely changed my life. Yeah. It’s humbling and staggering, and I still can’t quite believe it.

I also think the series helped erase the stigma that was previously attached to hard-core erotica and proved that it can be massively profitable.

Women want to read this kind of stuff, you know? It’s no secret. We all want to fall in love again. If you can do it in a book, it’s a fairly safe place to do it as well. So, I think, you know, anything that’s female-centric is generally scorned, and you kind of get used to that, really, but it’s actually, you know, a billion-dollar industry. I’m flabbergasted, really, by sometimes how dismissive people can be. And then, you see the movies did an amazing business as well, because people want to see a love story that’s got some spicy bits. Now we say spicy. This is the word. Spicy is the word. This is what I’m learning on Clubhouse. Spicy.

What was the previous word?

Hot. Sexy. You know. All of those type words. Spicy is good. There’s more going on there with spicy.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/books/el-james-freed-fifty-shades-of-grey.html

Filed Under: Media Business

Will Memorial Day weekend box office top the anticipated $100 million? RT’s Boom Bust wants to know

May 29, 2021 by Leave a Comment

RT’s Boom Bust is joined by senior media analyst at Comscore, Paul Dergarabedian, to take a look at how this summer movie season is expected to fare.

The expert compared a major comeback for the movie theaters on the 2021 Memorial Day weekend to the recovery of the travel industry that has recently been seen, as the nation is gradually leaving the pandemic-related restrictions behind.

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“Last year, the box office was down 80% in North America versus 2019,” the expert said. “And the travel industry is coming back as people want to get of the house, same thing with movie theaters: people want to go back.”

He stressed that the holiday weekend is incredibly important for the industry, despite a late start to the summer movie season.

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

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/525164-memorial-day-box-office/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

House Hunters Are Leaving the City, and Builders Can’t Keep Up

May 29, 2021 by Leave a Comment

River Islands, the development where the Namayans hoped to live, is in Lathrop, Calif., which has a population of 25,000. It sits about a half-hour beyond Altamont Pass, whose rolling hills and windmills mark the border between Alameda and San Joaquin Counties. Though technically outside the Bay Area region, Lathrop’s farms and open fields have been steadily supplanted by warehouses and subdivisions as it and nearby cities have become bedroom communities for priced-out workers who commute to the Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

In Livermore, on the eastern side of Alameda County, the typical home value is nearing $1 million, according to Zillow. That falls to $500,000 to $600,000 over the hill in places like Tracy, Manteca and Lathrop. The catch, of course, is that many residents endure draining, multihour commutes.

The pandemic may have upended that economic order, in California and elsewhere. Thousands of families that could afford to do so fled cities last spring, and while some will return, others will not — particularly if they are able to continue to work remotely at least part of the time. One recent study estimated that after the pandemic, one-fifth of workdays would be “supplied remotely” — down from half during the height of the pandemic but far above the 5 percent before it.

If those trends hold, it will make it easier for many workers to live not just in farther-out towns like Lathrop but to abandon high-cost regions like the Bay Area altogether. Midsize cities that for years have tried — usually in vain — to recruit large employers through tax breaks can now attract workers directly.

“If Google moves to Cleveland, that’s great, but if one Googler moves to Cleveland, that’s also great,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist of Upwork, a freelancing platform.

To some extent, the pandemic accelerated a shift that was already taking place. When the housing bubble burst, members of the millennial generation were in their teens and 20s. Now the oldest of them are turning 40, and about half are married. They are hitting the milestones when Americans have traditionally moved to the suburbs.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/business/economy/new-home-building-suburbs.html

Filed Under: Economy News

DubaiCoin surges 1,000% and nosedives in one day as emirate’s government claims new crypto is ‘scam’

May 29, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Somewhere in the background of the bleeding crypto market, the digital currency was propelled above 1,000% from $0.17 to $1.13 on Thursday, making a huge gain as market leaders like bitcoin, ether, dogecoin and others had all declined by about 10% overnight.

Also on rt.com Bitcoin tumbles below $36,000 as crypto markets extend losses after tumultuous week

The astonishing surge was due to a bogus statement alleging that DubaiCoin had been created by ArabianChain Technology, a company based in the United Arab Emirates. The claim was circulated via a website called DubPay, access to which is currently denied.

According to the now-defunct website, DubaiCoin was expected to be used “to pay for a range of goods and services both in-store and online,” with the coin to replace traditional bank-backed currencies.

“Circulation of the new digital currency will be controlled by both the city itself and authorized brokers,” the statement claimed.

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The growth of the token caused suspicion from the Dubai Electronic Security Centre, which issued a warning to investors, debunking the claim about DubaiCoin’s new status, and saying the website it had originated from was a front.

According to the state-backed regulator, DubaiCoin has nothing to do with the city emirate.

ArabianChain also tweeted a warning, denying that it had made any claims of the kind about the cryptocurrency and confirming that the website promoting it was fake. DubaiCoin was removed from market-tracking platforms immediately after the warnings were voiced.

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

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/525154-dubaicoin-surge-plunge-scam/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business
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