How do you know if a piece of art is real or fake? Ask a scientist. At New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, chemistry, physics and geology are all playing a part in the detective work of determining whether a work of art is original or a forgery. Now teens are learning the tricks of that trade as well. Tina Trinh has more.
…
Turkey on Wednesday announced tariff hikes on a range of U.S. goods in the latest back-and-forth move amid a deteriorating relationship between the two countries.
The extra tariffs apply to imports of vehicles, alcohol, coal, rice and cosmetics.
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Twitter the increases were being done “within the framework of the principle of reciprocity in retaliation for the conscious economic attacks by the United States.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accusing the United States of waging a targeted economic war on his country, and on Tuesday he proposed a boycott of U.S. electronic goods.
“If they have the iPhone, there is Samsung elsewhere. In our own country we have Vestel,” said Erdogan.
Asked how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration would react to any such Turkish boycott, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied during Tuesday afternoon’s briefing, “I certainly don’t have a policy announcement on that at this point.”
Trump administration sources say further sanctions against Turkey are under active consideration. But Sanders declined to say how the U.S. government plans to apply more pressure on Ankara, which repeatedly has ignored calls from Trump and others to free Christian pastor Andrew Brunson.
Turkey accuses Brunson of espionage and is holding him under house arrest pending his trial.
The chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Turkey, Jeffrey Hovenier, visited Brunson on Tuesday and called for his case — and those of others detained in Turkey — to be resolved “without delay” and in a “fair and transparent manner.”
National Security Adviser John Bolton met at the White House on Monday with Turkish ambassador Serdar Kilic, but the discussion reportedly did not result in any substantive progress.
Trump, who has called Brunson’s detention a “total disgrace,” last Friday doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum exports in order to increase pressure on Erdogan.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Turkey’s ministers of Justice and Interior in response to the continued detention of the pastor, who has lived in the country for 20 years and heads an evangelical congregation of about two dozen people in the port city of Izmir.
The escalating dispute between the two countries has exacerbated Turkey’s economic crisis, pushing the lira to record lows. The Turkish currency has lost about 40 percent of its value this year against the U.S. dollar.
Erdogan has called on Turks to exchange their dollars for lira in order to shore up the domestic currency.
In a joint statement Tuesday, Turkish business groups called on the government to institute tighter monetary policy in order to combat the currency crisis. They also said Turkey should work to resolve the situation with the United States diplomatically while also improving relations with another major trading partner, the European Union.
The Turkish central bank has pledged to take “all necessary measures” to stabilize the country’s economy to make sure the banks have all the money they need. But world stock traders were dismayed the bank did not raise interest rates, which is what many economists believe is necessary to ease the crisis.
The United States and Turkey also have diverging interests over Syria, which is enmeshed in a protracted civil war.
The differences are drawing Turkey closer to Russia, they key adversary of NATO but a country supplying more than half of Turkey’s gas.
Turkey has agreed to buy S-400 surface-to-air missiles from Russia, an unprecedented move by a NATO member, which has raised objections from members of both parties of the U.S. Congress and the Trump administration.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, voiced support for Turkey during a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara on Tuesday, stating both countries plan to switch from dollars to national currencies for their mutual trade.
“We view the policy of sanctions as unlawful and illegitimate, driven mostly by a desire to dominate everywhere and in everything, dictate policies and call shots in international affairs,” said Lavrov, predicting “such a policy can’t be a basis for normal dialogue and can’t last long.
Lavrov, alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, also declared, “We are at a turning point, without exaggeration, in world history” from dominance by a single power toward a multipolar environment.
…
India will send a manned flight into space by 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Wednesday as part of India’s independence day celebrations.
He said India will become the fourth country after Russia, the United States and China to achieve the feat and its astronaut could be a man or a woman. The space capsule that will transport India’s astronauts was tested a few days earlier.
Rakesh Sharma was the first Indian to travel in space, aboard a Soviet rocket in 1984. As part of its own space program, India successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars in 2014.
India won independence from British colonialists in 1947. Modi’s 80-minute speech, broadcast live from the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, comes months before national elections.
Modi listed his government’s achievements in the past four years in reforming the country’s economy, reducing poverty and corruption. He announced a health insurance scheme for 500 million poor people providing a cover of 500,000 rupees ($7,150) per family a year.
He said India will become a growth engine for the world economy as the “sleeping elephant” has started to run on the back of structural economic reforms.
He said its economy was seen as fragile before 2014 but was now attracting investment. India is the sixth largest economy in the world and Modi said international institutions see India as giving strength to the world economy for the next three decades.
He said the structural reforms like a national tax replacing various national and local taxes, bankruptcy and insolvency laws, and a crackdown on corruption have helped transform the economy.
…
Cuba’s government said it provided free internet to the Communist-run island’s more than 5 million cellphone users on Tuesday, in an eight-hour test before it launches sales of the service.
Cuba is one of the Western Hemisphere’s least connected countries. State-run telecommunications monopoly ETECSA announced the trial, with Tuesday marking the first time internet services were available nationwide.
There are hundreds of WiFi hotspots in Cuba but virtually no home penetration.
Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, considered the country’s social media pioneer, raved that she had directly sent a tweet from her mobile. In another tweet, she called the test a “citizen’s victory.”
On the streets of Havana, mobile users said they were happy about the day of free internet, even as some complained that connectivity was notably slower than usual.
“This is marvelous news because we can talk with family abroad without going to specific WiFi spots, there is more intimacy,” said taxi driver Andres Peraza.
Forty percent of Cubans have relatives living abroad.
Leinier Valdez, one of a group of young people trying to connect, said, “this is great. Its better and more so when you can connect for free.”
Hotspots currently charge about $1 an hour although monthly wages in Cuba average just $30.
The government has not yet said how much most Cubans would pay for mobile internet, or when exactly sales of the service will begin. But ETECSA is already charging companies and embassies $45 a month for four gigabytes.
Analysts have said broader Web access will ultimately weaken government control over what information reaches people in a country where the state has a monopoly on the media.
Whether because of a lack of cash, a long-running U.S. trade embargo or concerns about the flow of information, Cuba has lagged far behind most countries in Web access. Until 2013, internet was largely only available to the public at tourist hotels on the island.
But the government has since made boosting connectivity a priority, introducing cybercafes and outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots and slowly starting to hook up homes to the Web.
Long before he took office from Raul Castro in April, 58-year-old President Miguel Diaz-Canel championed the cause.
“We need to be able to put the content of the revolution online,” he told parliament in July, adding that Cubans could thus “counter the avalanche of pseudo-cultural, banal and vulgar content” on the internet.
Royal Bank of Scotland will pay $4.9 billion to settle U.S. claims that it misled investors on residential mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2008, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.
The Justice Department said the penalty was the largest ever imposed on a bank for misconduct leading up to the financial crisis. The bank announced in May that it had reached the settlement in principle.
The government alleges RBS misled investors in underwriting and issuing residential mortgage-backed securities, understating the risks behind many of the loans and providing inaccurate data.
“Despite assurances by RBS to its investors, RBS’s deals were backed by mortgage loans with a high risk of default,” Andrew E. Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement.
The Justice Department said that RBS disputes the allegations and does not admit wrongdoing, although the bank said in a statement it was happy to move on.
“There is no place for the sort of unacceptable behavior alleged by the DoJ at the bank we are building today,” RBS Chief Executive Ross McEwan said.
Dividend
In conjunction with the settlement, the bank also said it would be paying out an interim ordinary dividend of 2 pence per share on October 12 to shareholders.
The dividend is the bank’s first since its near-collapse and 45.5 billion-pound ($58 billion) state bailout in 2008.
The DOJ settlement and the resumption of dividends were two of the last big milestones in RBS’s decade-long journey back to normality. The looming Justice Department fine had weighed on the bank’s share price and prevented it from paying out to its shareholders.
Together with hefty cuts made to its investment bank and international business, a return to dividends could help shift the bank’s profile with investors from a risky bet into a safe, predictable value stock.
It also expands the market for future government share sales by enabling a broader array of investors to look at buying the bank’s shares.
Tuesday’s announcement marked the latest in a long-running series of massive settlements struck between the U.S. government and large global banks over conduct leading up to the financial crisis.
On August 1, the Justice Department struck a settlement with Wells Fargo, which agreed to pay $2.09 billion to settle similar claims.
…
Alexei Nikolayev, one of more than 56 million Russians who re-elected President Vladimir Putin in March, is already counting the likely cost of a weaker ruble: less spending power abroad, higher prices at home and
another round of belt tightening.
But Nikolayev, 56, a graphic designer who enjoys foreign travel and imported wine, blames the West, not Putin, for the pain and has no regrets about voting for a politician he sees as the right man to guide Russia through trubled times.
“It’s painful and it’s unpleasant, but it won’t change my politics,” Nikolayev said of the ruble shedding 10 percent of its value against the dollar since the end of July, driven down largely by new U.S. sanctions on Russia. “In fact, as strange as it may sound, it will only strengthen my convictions. They [the West] are trying to break Russia.”
Nikolayev’s view that Putin is not to blame is held widely among Russians, according to Stepan Goncharov, a sociologist at the Levada Center pollster.
“People don’t really understand the dynamics behind it and the president, traditionally, is safe from criticism,” Goncharov told Reuters.
The narrative in Russia that the ruble’s slide is the result of a Western plot has direct echoes with Russian ally Turkey, whose lira currency slid to a record low Monday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that his country is the target of an economic war and that Turkey will boycott some U.S. imports in retaliation.
In Russia, the falling ruble causes pain for some. The price of imported goods is likely to rise. Foreign vacations have also become more expensive.
Irina Turina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Travel Industry Union, said travel agents saw demand for package holidays fall 10 to 15 percent last week because of the ruble’s volatility.
“People who have not yet paid in full for their holidays are rushing to pay off the rest even if they have no obligation to do so,” Turina told Reuters, saying people were worried that the outstanding balance would be recalculated according to a higher, less favorable exchange rate.
“People who have not yet bought package holidays are also pausing for thought,” she said. “It’s not just about paying for your holiday. You need spending money once you get there, and people take dollars.”
’Nothing is forever’
Nevertheless, early and anecdotal signs suggest many Russians, long inured to a volatile national currency, are stoic, even defiant, in the face of a falling ruble.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week that the sanctions on Russia had nothing to do with Moscow’s behavior in places like Ukraine or Syria but were motivated by a U.S. need to keep economic rivals down.
That view finds favor with many Russians who have listened via state TV and taken in the Kremlin’s anti-Western rhetoric for years.
Other Russians were simply sanguine about a ruble drop that has taken few by surprise because they have seen worse before.
“Nothing is forever; things will change somehow,” said Moscow resident Gennady Tsurkan. “Everything will always change for the better. I think that these days are not far off, I believe that.”
The fall in the ruble is much less severe than the currency crisis after 2014, when an economic slump coincided with the fallout from Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Since that time, Russian companies have reduced their foreign borrowing, the state has cut the amount it needs to raise on Western debt markets, and the country imports fewer goods that it needs to pay for in dollars.
Putin’s still-high approval rating has slipped in the past few months, but pollsters put that down to an unpopular proposed pension reform, not the weakness of the ruble.
Pollsters say while the ruble’s weakness may fuel an emerging sense of discontent among some Russians that was sparked by the pension reform, it is unclear if it will lead to protests or influence a political landscape that Putin has bestrode for over 18 years.
“If it does have an effect, it will be an indirect one, magnifying discontent over falling living conditions,” said Levada Center’s Goncharov.
Nikolayev, the Putin-supporting graphic designer, was philosophical:
“It’s like sunshine or snow. I can’t influence it. Maybe I’ll have to drink a different kind of wine. Or maybe I’ll have to buy one instead of two pairs of shoes. It’s painful, but not that painful.”
…
Sprint said Tuesday it has partnered with phone manufacturer LG Electronics to launch a 5G smartphone in the first half of next year, marking the first 5G device deal for the No. 4 U.S. wireless carrier.
Sprint is working to persuade antitrust regulators to approve its merger with larger rival T-Mobile US Inc in a $26 billion deal, which the companies say will help them more quickly build the next-generation wireless network. That network is expected to eventually pave the way for new technologies like autonomous cars.
The LG phone will be customized to Sprint’s planned 5G network, and will be compatible with T-Mobile only on that carrier’s existing 4G network, John Tudhope, Sprint director of product development, said in an interview.
The price of the phone and exact launch date will be announced later, Sprint said in a news release.
Last month, Sprint introduced new unlimited wireless plans bundled with video streaming platform Hulu and music streaming service Tidal, in an effort to attract more customers with media content.
Tudhope said Sprint will continue to use content as a way to “bring to life the value of 5G,” as one of the benefits of the 5G network will be faster download times of video content on smartphones.
The company had previously announced it would initially launch its 5G network in nine cities in 2019, including New York City and Los Angeles.
Sprint is the fourth-largest cellphone service provider in terms of number of customers, after Verizon Communications, AT&T and T-Mobile.
…
Stevie Wonder visited an ailing Aretha Franklin at her home in Detroit on Tuesday.
Franklin’s publicist Gwendolyn Quinn told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Franklin’s ex-husband, actor Glynn Turman, also visited the Queen of Soul, who is seriously ill.
A person close to Franklin, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to publicly talk about the topic, told the AP on Monday that the singer is ill. No more details were provided.
Franklin canceled planned concerts earlier this year after she was ordered by her doctor to stay off the road and rest up. The 76-year-old announced plans to retire last year, saying she would perform at “some select things.”
Fans, friends and musicians influenced by Franklin offered positive words to the iconic singer when news broke that she was ill, including Rod Stewart, Mariah Carey, Chaka Khan, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tyler Perry, Missy Elliott and Wayne Brady.
At her concert in Detroit on Monday night with Jay-Z, Beyonce thanked Franklin for her “beautiful music” and said “we love you.”
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton tweeted Monday that he and Hillary Clinton “are thinking about Aretha Franklin tonight & listening to her music that has been such an important part of our lives the last 50 years.”
“We hope you’ll lift her up by listening and sharing her songs that have meant the most to you,” Clinton wrote.
In an interview with the AP on Monday, Emmy-winning actor Sterling K. Brown said, “May I wish the Queen of Soul all the best.”
“Your music has moved and inspired a generation,” he added, “so my prayers are with you. Wishing you all the best, queen.”
Actress-singer Mandy Moore, who stars in “This Is Us” with Brown, said Franklin has “the most incredible legacy.”
“Who is not a fan? I don’t think there is anyone that Aretha Franklin’s music has not touched or influenced in one way or another,” she told the AP. “She’s the best of the best.”
Fans gathered Tuesday in Lafayette Park, directly in front of the White House, to pray for Franklin. With a saxophonist playing nearby, Rocky Twyman clutched a handwritten get-well card made from a white poster and appealed to passing tourists to sign it and pray for the singer.
The card read: “Book of Love and Healing for Aretha, the Queen.”
Twyman, of Rockville, Maryland, described himself as a longtime fan. He said he and his religious group held a prayer vigil outside the White House for Franklin in 2013, and she got better then.
“We’re hoping that God will shine down upon her and heal her again,” he said.
Tuva Johannessen, a tourist visiting from Norway, signed Twyman’s get-well card. The 34-year-old said she has been listening to Franklin’s music all her life.
“I loved how she has an ability to touch people’s heart with her music,” Johannessen said.
…
Tesla’s board named a special committee of three directors on Tuesday to evaluate possibly taking the electric carmaker private, although it said it had yet to see a firm offer from the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk.
The Silicon Valley billionaire last week said on Twitter he wants to take Tesla private at $420 a share, valuing it at $72 billion, and that funding was “secured.”
That earlier tweet triggered investor lawsuits and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into the accuracy of his statement, according to multiple media reports.
Musk on Monday gave his most detailed vision of how a take-private deal could work, but shares ended flat, indicating investor skepticism.
The shares were last down 1 percent at $352.88 on Tuesday.
Musk said Monday he had held talks with a Saudi sovereign fund on a buyout that would take Tesla off the Nasdaq exchange – an extraordinary move for what is now the United States’ most valuable automaker. Tesla has a market capitalization of $60 billion, bigger than Detroit rivals General Motors Co or Ford Motor Co, who produce far more cars.
The company said in the statement the special committee has the authority to take any action on behalf of the board to evaluate and negotiate a potential transaction and alternatives to any transaction proposed by Musk.
Tuesday’s announcement means three members of Tesla’s board will now weigh whether it is advisable – or even feasible – to pursue what could be the biggest-ever go-private deal, and they are doing so before receiving a formal proposal from the CEO.
“The special committee has not yet received a formal proposal from Mr. Musk regarding any Going Private Transaction,” the company said in a public filing with U.S. securities regulators, the first it has made since Musk’s tweets last week.
Asked about the outcome of the special committee, analyst Chaim Siegel at Elazar Advisors said, “This is not easy. Anything is possible from pulling something together to nothing. I hope nothing – so the stock can trade and benefit from the earnings inflection,” he said, referring to a promise by Musk the company would turn profitable later this year.
A blogging, tweeting CEO
Musk has yet to convince Wall Street analysts and investors that he can find the billions needed to complete the deal. Tesla’s handling of Musk’s proposal and its failure to promptly file a formal disclosure, meanwhile, have raised governance concerns and sparked questions about how companies use social media.
Musk first tweeted he planned to go private and that funding was “secured” last week, sending Tesla shares soaring 11 percent, but investors have appeared skeptical about the details he has provided since.
He blogged on Monday that recent talks with a Saudi sovereign wealth fund gave him confidence funding was nailed down, but that he was still talking with the fund and other investors. He tweeted later he was working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Silver Lake as financial advisers, though a source said the private equity firm was working in an unpaid, informal capacity and also not discussing participating as an investor.
Goldman had not been formally tapped as a financial adviser by Musk when he revealed plans last week to take the automaker private and said he had secured the funding for the transaction, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Goldman did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
“Despite Elon Musk’s frustration with being a public company, I think there are more advantages to remaining public,” said CFRA analyst Efraim Levy, citing cheaper access to capital and media exposure due to interest in a public company.
Three-member panel
Tesla said the committee consists only of independent directors: Brad Buss, Robyn Denholm and Linda Johnson Rice.
But corporate governance and shareholder voting advisers Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services said they do not consider Buss an independent director, due to his connections to a solar panel business the company bought two years ago.
Buss was chief financial officer of solar panel installer SolarCity for two years before retiring when Tesla paid $2.6 billion for the sales and installation firm in 2016. It was Tesla’s last big deal and was criticized by some on Wall Street because the company, founded by two of Musk’s cousins, had seen its business shrink before the takeover.
Denholm, the first woman on Tesla’s board, is chief operations officer of telecom firm Telstra and the ex-CFO of network gear maker Juniper Networks.
Rice, the first African-American and second woman to join the board, is CEO of Johnson Publishing Company and Chairman Emeritus of EBONY Media Holdings, the parent of EBONY and Jet brands, according to Tesla’s website.
Tesla’s other board members include Musk; his brother Kimbal Musk; Twenty-First Century Fox’s CEO James Murdoch; Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners; and Ira Ehrenpreis, founder of venture capital firm DBL Partners.
One director, Steve Jurvetson, is currently on leave of absence following allegations of sexual harassment.
Tesla’s board said on Aug. 8 that Musk had held talks with the directors in the previous week on taking the company private.
Latham and Watkins LLP has been retained by the committee as its legal counsel. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati will be legal counsel for Tesla itself.
Vienna has dislodged Melbourne for the first time at the top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index, strengthening the Austrian capital’s claim to being the world’s most pleasant city to live in.
The two metropolises have been neck and neck in the annual survey of 140 urban centers for years, with Melbourne clinching the title for the past seven editions. This year, a downgraded threat of militant attacks in western Europe as well as the city’s low crime rate helped nudge Vienna into first place.
Vienna regularly tops a larger ranking of cities by quality of life compiled by consulting firm Mercer. It is the first time it has topped the EIU survey, which began in its current form in 2004.
At the other end of the table, Damascus retained last place, followed by the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, and Lagos in Nigeria.
The survey does not include several of the world’s most dangerous capitals, such as Baghdad and Kabul.
“While in the past couple of years cities in Europe were affected by the spreading perceived threat of terrorism in the region, which caused heightened security measures, the past year has seen a return to normalcy,” the EIU said in a statement about the report published on Tuesday.
“A long-running contender to the title, Vienna has succeeded in displacing Melbourne from the top spot due to increases in the Austrian capital’s stability category ratings,” it said, referring to one of the index’s five headline components.
Vienna and Melbourne scored maximum points in the healthcare, education and infrastructure categories. But while Melbourne extended its lead in the culture and environment component, that was outweighed by Vienna’s improved stability ranking.
Osaka, Calgary and Sydney completed the top five in the survey, which the EIU says tends to favor medium-sized cities in wealthy countries, often with relatively low population densities. Much larger and more crowded cities tend to have higher crime rates and more strained infrastructure, it said.
London for instance ranks 48th.
Vienna, once the capital of a large empire rather than today’s small Alpine republic, has yet to match its pre-World War I population of 2.1 million. Its many green spaces include lakes with popular beaches and vineyards with sweeping views of the capital. Public transport is cheap and efficient.
In addition to the generally improved security outlook for western Europe, Vienna benefited from its low crime rate, the survey’s editor Roxana Slavcheva said.
“One of the sub-categories that Vienna does really well in is the prevalence of petty crime … It’s proven to be one of the safest cities in Europe,” she said.
…
Venezuela’s heavily subsidized domestic gasoline prices should rise to international levels to avoid billions of dollars in annual losses due to fuel smuggling, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised address on Monday.
“Gasoline must be sold at an international price to stop smuggling to Colombia and the Caribbean,” Maduro said in a televised address.
Venezuela, like most oil-producing countries, has for decades subsidized fuel as a benefit to consumers. But its fuel prices have remained nearly flat for years despite hyperinflation that the International Monetary Fund has projected would reach 1,000,000 percent this year.
That means that for the price of a cup of coffee, a driver can now fill the tank of a small SUV nearly 9,000 times.
Recently, the average price of a coffee with milk was 2.2 million bolivars, or about 50 cents, local media has reported.
Smugglers do brisk business reselling fuel in neighboring countries.
Maduro said the government would still provide “direct subsidies” to citizens holding the “fatherland card,” a state-issued identification card that the government uses to provide bonuses and track use of social services.
He said the subsidy was only available to those who registered their cars in a vehicle census being conducted by the state.
…
Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday his administration will invest more than $11 billion to boost refining capacity in order to curb growing fuel imports.
Lopez Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, told reporters his government plans to invest $2.6 billion to modernize existing domestic refineries owned and operated by national oil company Pemex, and spend another $8.4 billion to build a new one within three years.
The $8.4-billion figure is higher than a $6 billion estimate provided by a key energy advisor during the campaign.
Lopez Obrador, set to become Mexico’s first leftist president in decades, did not detail how the projects would be financed or whether private capital would be involved, but he has often said he will not raise taxes or grow government debt.
Mexico is among Latin America’s largest crude exporters, but is also the biggest importer of U.S. refined products. The country’s next president has pledged to lift refining capacity, which he says has declined due to corruption and neglect.
Pemex, formally known as Petroleos Mexicanos, has six domestic refineries with a total processing capacity of some 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd), but the facilities are only operating at about 40 percent of capacity so far this year.
Meanwhile, gasoline and diesel imports have sky-rocketed in recent months amid planned and unplanned refinery stoppages.
Pemex has posted losses in its refining division for years but Lopez Obrador aims to boost crude processing enough to halt imports within three years.
Lopez Obrador also said he plans to invest another $4 billion to drill new onshore and shallow-water oil wells in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas.
Pemex production has consistently declined in recent years to fall below 2 million bpd after hitting peak output of 3.4 million bpd in 2004.
President Enrique Pena Nieto passed a reform to open up Mexico’s state-run energy industry to private producers, which has led to a series of competitive auctions that have awarded more than 100 oil exploration and production contracts.
Lopez Obrador has said he will respect those contracts as long as an ongoing review does not find signs of corruption. He is widely expected to slow down the process of offering more contracts to private players.
($1 = 19.1100 Mexican pesos)
…
The world will soon have its first batch of commercially available 3D-printed concrete homes. A consortium of the Dutch municipality of Eindhoven, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), and three private firms has joined forces to build five of these unique homes in the hub city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
…
Constance Wu had resigned herself to the fact that “Crazy Rich Asians” was not going to work out for her. She was under contract for her sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” both were filming in the fall, and that was that. “Crazy Rich Asians” would be the first studio-made Asian-American movie in 25 years, and Wu, who has established herself as a crusader for Asian-American representation in Hollywood, would have to sit this historic moment out.
But then, feeling “kind of dramatic,” and thinking about the significance of the project to her and untold number of Asian-Americans who make it a point to tell her their stories because of her tweets and “Fresh Off the Boat,” Wu decided to give it one last shot and composed an email to “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu.
“I said, I know the dates don’t work out and whoever you cast, I will be the first in line and I will be their No. 1 fan and supporter, but I did want to let you know that I would put 110 percent of my heart into this project and I know what to do with it and how to carry a movie and if you can just wait for me, I don’t think you’ll regret it,” Wu, 36, said. “I did NOT think this email would work. I did it more for me so that I felt that I had told my truth. But then he read it and said, “You guys, we’ve got to push the production.”
Sitting in a restaurant at the Beverly Wilshire, a hotel famous for co-starring in another “Cinderella” story, “Pretty Woman,” and sipping on a “cocktail” of grapefruit juice and sparkling water, Wu is describing how “Crazy Rich Asians,” out nationwide Wednesday is also a kind of “Cinderella” story. Based the first book in author Kevin Kwan’s popular trilogy, Wu’s character Rachel Chu is a middle-class economics professor from the U.S. who finds herself navigating the upper echelons of Singapore’s wealthy classes when her boyfriend Nick Young takes her home for a wedding and to meet his disapproving family and all the jealous women also vying for the attention of the “prince.”
“It’s a fairy tale, it really is,” Wu said. “And there are a lot of different shoes in the movie!”
A native of Richmond, Virginia, and a classically-trained theater actress with a passion for musicals, Wu has been working toward a moment like this her whole life, and taking it very seriously. During the shoot, she wouldn’t go out with her co-stars for karaoke nights or have a drink after a long day of work. She wanted to be clear of mind and she’d already promised her director that she was going to give it her all.
She knew how unlikely it was that she’d ever get an opportunity as an Asian-American woman to lead a studio movie.
“Even a terrific actress like Sandra Oh was always No. 2 or No. 3 in the movie, she was never No. 1 unless it was an independent movie,” said Wu, who is not shy about saying that she only wants to go out for roles where she is the No. 1 star. It’s a drive that has made some uncomfortable.
“People are like, ‘Who do you think you are?’ And it’s like, I guess I think I’m a talented actor and I guess I’m not a person who is going to let you make me feel small anymore,” she said.
But Wu isn’t interested in making people feel comfortable at the expense of her truth, which is why at least part of her time is spent amplifying underrepresented voices on twitter, even knowing that it’s affected her employment opportunities.
Wu once heard that a friend’s liberal boyfriend said he didn’t like Wu’s politics.
“I’m like, ‘Does he not like my politics or does he not like that I have politics?’ And she asked him and he was like, “Oh I guess it’s that,'” Wu said.
Fame, she said, is silly in that regard. She thinks it’s “dumb” that she has a bigger voice than other people, like journalists or academics who are more studied in discourse on race and intersectionality. But, she also realized that while she has this platform, she can at least do some good with it.
Henry Golding, who plays Nick, is in awe of Wu’s fortitude.
“She’s such a role model for so many people. She has a backbone, which a lot of people don’t. She’s not afraid of saying what’s on her mind and really driving home what she thinks should be done, or what’s not happening in the industry that should be happening,” said Golding. “She’s going to go down as a real fighter and someone who can act the socks off anything. She is Rachel Chu.”
As for what’s next, Wu said she thinks she’s going to have a lot of choices in the coming years.
“I’m very privileged and lucky and I’m at a point where I can sort of get to decide where I want to go with my career,” Wu said.
And first up on her wish-list? A musical.
…
Tesla’s handling of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s proposal to take the carmaker private and its failure to promptly file a formal disclosure has raised governance concerns and sparked questions about how companies use social media.
Musk stunned investors last Tuesday by announcing on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private in a potential $72 billion transaction and that “funding” had been “secured.”
Tesla’s shares closed up 11 percent before retrenching after the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had asked Tesla why Musk announced his plans on Twitter and whether his statement was truthful.
Musk provided no details of his funding until Monday, when he said in a blog on Tesla’s website that he was in discussions with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other potential backers but that financing was not yet nailed down.
Musk said his tweet and blogs were issued in his personal capacity as a private bidder for Tesla’s stock. A Tesla spokesman pointed Reuters to Musk’s blog in response to a request for comment.
Putting aside whether Musk misled anyone, the unorthodox manner in which he announced the news and Tesla’s failure to promptly clarify the situation with a regulatory filing is a corporate governance lapse that raises questions about how companies use social media to release market-moving news, securities lawyers said.
“Management buyouts or other take-private transactions already suffer from serious information asymmetry between management and public shareholders,” said Gabriel Rauterberg, a University of Michigan law professor.
SEC rules typically require companies to file an 8-K form within four business days of a significant corporate event.
While several securities lawyers said Musk’s tweets alone did not trigger this obligation, such a filing would be prudent given the unusual circumstances, David Axelrod, a partner at law firm Ballard Spahr LLP, said.
“An 8-K would provide some more details, it would say what stage negotiations are in, and provide more information than 53 characters in a tweet,” he added.
Full and fair disclosure
SEC guidelines published in 2013 allow companies and their executives to use social media to distribute material information, provided investors have been alerted that this is a possibility. Tesla did this in a 2013 filing.
But such disclosures have to be full and fair, meaning the information is complete and accessible by all investors at the same time, a bar that Musk’s tweets may not have met.
“Twitter is not designed to provide full and fair disclosure. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t, but in a series of 20 to 30 characters I’m not sure you’re getting full disclosure,” said Zachary Fallon, a former SEC attorney and principal at law firm Blakemore Fallon.
The SEC declined to comment Monday.
Securities lawyers said there was also a question mark over whether Musk selectively disclosed information on the possible terms of the deal when he subsequently replied to followers, two of whom claim in their handles to be investors.
Those tweets were not immediately visible to all followers of Musk’s main feed until he retweeted them.
History of Twitter use
The 47-year-old billionaire’s history of joking about Tesla and using twitter to bait his critics also appears to have undermined trust in Musk’s feed as a reliable source of company information, with many investors initially believing Tuesday’s tweet was a prank.
In his blog, Musk said he made the announcement on Twitter to ensure all investors were aware of his plan before speaking with the company’s largest shareholders.
But his claim to have done so as a private person presents a potential conflict of interest, said Nimish Patel, a lawyer with Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.
“If you’re speaking on behalf of the company using resources like Twitter and the company website, while at the same time saying you’re a private individual expressing your own personal views, you are being inconsistent and creating confusion for investors. And when there’s confusion, the SEC is likely going to get involved,” he added.
…
Once upon a time in central Greece … a small town fell in love with famed film composer Ennio Morricone and painted a huge mural in his honor.
The residents of Larissa have launched a fan club dedicated to the Italian maestro — known for his scores for classic movies Once Upon a Time in America, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Mission.
Members of the Cultural Society of Friends of Ennio Morricone Music in Greece screen his films and broadcast his concerts live on screens at archaeological sites.
In the latest sign of their appreciation, they have commissioned a mural of Morricone’s bespectacled profile on a five-story residential block, about 1,000 km (620 miles) away from his birthplace in Rome.
“It is very visible, we wanted a clear illustration of him, so it could always remain here in our town, magnificent, like him and his large body of work,” said society president Konstantinos Papakostas.
Papakostas set up the society in 2010 after seeing the Oscar-winning composer perform live in the Italian capital, then Assago, Milan.
He spread the word in Larissa and has since persuaded 1,080 fellow townspeople to sign up as members.
“I am completely in awe of him and his music,” Papakostas said.
Morricone, who turns 90 this year, is still composing music and has a series of performances lined up as part of “The 60 Years in Music” tour.
…
Glenn Close may be known for playing strong, often ruthless women, but like her long-subdued character in The Wife she says she’s only just starting to feel comfortable in her own skin.
Close plays Joan, the self-effacing spouse of a successful novelist in The Wife, which opens in the United States on Friday as women in Hollywood and beyond are demanding a louder voice.
Decades of suppressing her own talents and desires in support of her husband’s career begin to unravel when he wins the Nobel Prize for literature and a biographer probes the couple’s life.
“The film took 14 years to get made and who knew that it would be incredibly relevant?” Close, 71, told Reuters. The film is based on the 2003 book of the same name by Meg Wolitzer.
Close’s performance has won rave reviews, sparking talk of a potential seventh Oscar nomination next year. The Hollywood Reporter said the actress “commands the center of The Wife: still, formidable and impossible to look away from.”
Despite a 40-year career, three Emmy awards, three Tonys and six Oscar nominations, the star of Fatal Attraction and the TV drama Damages says she feels she is just beginning.
“I’m a very late bloomer. It took me a very long time to learn some basic things. That’s why it’s kind of wonderful and ironic for me to be at this point at my life and feel like it’s just the beginning,” she said.
Close launched her acting career in the theater in the 1970s and said she feels lucky to have found success in job she is so passionate about.
“I think I’m at a time in my life where I’ve finally accepted certain things about myself, and it’s OK. The fact that I’m not a hugely social person, that I’m very much in my head is OK,” she said. “I feel happier and more calm and more excited about life than I ever have.”
…
Fans and friends, including Mariah Carey and Missy Elliott, offered prayers and well wishes to Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who is seriously ill.
A person close to Franklin, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to publicly talk about the topic, told The Associated Press on Monday that the singer is seriously ill. No more details were provided.
Carey, who considers Franklin one of her biggest influences, wrote on Twitter that she is “praying for the Queen of Soul.” Missy Elliott said the public has to celebrate iconic artists before they die.
“So many [of them] have given us decades of Timeless music,” the rapper wrote on Twitter.
Mark Frost, Andy Cohen and Ciara also posted about Franklin, who is considered the greatest singer of all-time and is known for hits like “Respect” and “[You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman.”
Franklin canceled planned concerts earlier this year after she was ordered by her doctor to stay off the road and rest up. She was originally scheduled to perform on her 76th birthday in March in Newark, New Jersey, and at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in April.
Last year, the icon announced her plans to retire, saying she would perform at “some select things.” One of those select events was a gala for Elton John’s 25th anniversary of his AIDS foundation in November in New York City, where Franklin closed the event with a collection of songs including “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Freeway.”
Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the lone surviving original member of the Four Tops, told the AP on Monday morning they have been “very close” for decades and their most recent conversation was about a week ago by phone. Fakir said they talked after Franklin had stopped by his Detroit house when he wasn’t there.
“She was telling me she rides around the city every now and then — she talks about how beautiful it is again,” Fakir said. “We were reminiscing about how blessed we were — only a couple two of us are around from that era. We were just kind of reminiscing about the good times we had.”
Fakir, who calls Franklin “baby sis” because he’s older than she is by six years, said despite her health troubles “she was talking about the future.”
“She talked about this great, big special she was going to have in New York, with all her great friends performing,” he said. “It made me feel good as well — she was still hoping and wishing and dreaming as we do in this business.”
…
Over the last 25 years, Hugo Kohl has developed his own style of vintage jewelry using the same techniques as industrial revolution artisans at the end of the 18th century.
…
Even if you have “Location History” off, Google often stores your precise location. Here’s how to delete those markers and some best-effort practices that keep your location as private as possible.
But there’s no panacea, because simply connecting to the internet on any device flags an IP address that can be geographically mapped. Smartphones also connect to cell towers, so your carrier knows your general location at all times.
To prevent further tracking
For any device:
Fire up your browser and go to myactivity.google.com. (You’ll need to be logged into Google) On the upper left drop-down menu, go to “Activity Controls.” Turn off both “Web & App Activity” and “Location History.” That should prevent precise location markers from being stored to your Google account.
Google will warn you that some of its services won’t work as well with these settings off. In particular, neither the Google Assistant, a digital concierge, nor the Google Home smart speaker will be particularly useful.
On iOS:
If you use Google Maps, adjust your location setting to “While Using” the app; this will prevent the app from accessing your location when it’s not active. Go to Settings Privacy Location Services and from there select Google Maps to make the adjustment.
In the Safari web browser, consider using a search engine other than Google. Under Settings Safari Search Engine, you can find other options like Bing or DuckDuckGo. You can turn location off while browsing by going to Settings Privacy Location Services Safari Websites, and turn this to “Never.” (This still won’t prevent advertisers from knowing your rough location based on IP address on any website).
You can also turn Location Services off to the device almost completely from Settings Privacy Location Services. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps will still work, but they won’t know where you are on the map and won’t be able to give you directions. Emergency responders will still be able to find you if the need arises.
On Android:
Under the main settings icon click on “Security & location.” Scroll down to the “Privacy” heading. Tap “Location.” You can toggle it off for the entire device.
Use “App-level permissions” to turn off access to various apps. Unlike the iPhone, there is no setting for “While Using.” You cannot turn off Google Play services, which supplies your location to other apps if you leave that service on.
Sign in as a “guest” on your Android device by swiping down from top and tapping the downward-facing caret, then again on the torso icon. Be aware of which services you sign in on, like Chrome.
You can also change search engines even in Chrome.
To delete past location tracking:
For any device:
On the page myactivity.google.com, look for any entry that has a location pin icon beside the word “details.” Clicking on that pops up a window that includes a link that sometimes says “From your current location.” Clicking on it will open Google Maps, which will display where you were at the time.
You can delete it from this popup by clicking on the navigation icon with the three stacked dots and then “Delete.”
Some items will be grouped in unexpected places, such as topic names, google.com, Search, or Maps. You have to delete them item by item. You can wholesale delete all items in date ranges or by service, but will end up taking out more than just location markers.