By Matt Cantor
A college graduation party in Venezuela ended in tragedy after gunmen opened fire, killing eight people. Six of the dead were teenagers, officials say. The attackers “beat (victims) up inside the house and then executed them without mercy … they didn’t leave anyone alive,” says a local of the shooting in… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Danny King
Filed under:
It’s just one in a laundry list of factors, but more fuel-efficient cars could make a difference in lowering oil prices dramatically to half their present levels, plunging to $50 a barrel by the end of the year. That’s what Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski is predicting in a new interview on CNBC‘s Squawk Box, though he is quick to point out that a halving of oil prices doesn’t necessarily translate to a halving of fuel prices. And, as CNN reports, lower oil prices could mean protests in oil-producing OPEC nations.
Petrowski highlights the fact that North America is “producing record amounts of oil and natural gas,” adding that OPEC suppliers are up as well. Additionally, demand from countries like China has ebbed, while the utilities sector has also cut its use of oil. Petrowski estimates that a shortage of pipelines and the need to transport fuel via rail and truck adds about 40 cents a gallon to gas prices. CNN explains that more domestic energy production (and, again, dropping demand in China) means that “demand for OPEC oil may fall by a million barrels a day over the next three years.” Given that Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations rely on high oil prices to fund domestic spending, lower crude prices could cause instability around the world, from Iran to Venezuela to Russia.
Lower oil prices don’t influence gas prices directly, but, they will have an impact on gas prices – and thus the car market in the US. Right now, the price of regular gas in the States has climbed about 15 cents in the past week to $3.66 a gallon, according to AAA. Prices are about even with a month ago, but have risen about seven percent in the past year. For more, check out a video of Petrowski’s interview on CNBC by scrolling below.
Gulf CEO says oil prices could halve by end of year, cause global instability [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 19 Jul 2013 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog
Spanish police said Monday they had arrested a notorious British drug dealer, Brian Charrington, whom they accused of running an international trafficking racket involving cocaine from Venezuela.
Police arrested 13 people overall in Spain and Venezuela, including Charrington, “one of the 10 criminals most investigated by European police and leader of an international drug-trafficking organisation”, a police statement said.
Officers seized 220 kilos (485 pounds) of cocaine hidden in an apartment in L’Albir, near the eastern resort city of Benidorm, and impounded property and bank accounts worth more than five million euros ($6.5 million), it added.
Charrington has been named by British media as a major drug baron active since the 1980s.
The statement said police would give more details of the arrests at a news conference on Tuesday.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden possesses enough information to cause more damage to the United States government than “anyone else has ever had in the history” of the country, according to the journalist who first reported the former contractor’s leaked documents.
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper who first reported on the intelligence leaks, told Argentinian newspaper La Nacion that the U.S. government should exercise extreme care with Snowden because he has the potential to do further damage to the country.
“But that’s not his goal,” Greenwald told the newspaper. “His objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing what they are exposing themselves to, without consciously agreeing to surrender their rights to privacy. He has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the U.S. government if they were made public.”
Greenwald also told The Associated Press that disclosure of the information in the documents would “allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”
Greenwald said “literally thousands” of documents taken by Snowden constitute “basically the instruction manual” for how the NSA is built.
“In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,” said Greenwald, adding that the interview took place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden.
Greenwald believes the disclosure of the information in the documents would not prove harmful to Americans or their national security, but said Snowden has insisted they not be made public.
“I think it would be harmful to the U.S. government, as they perceive their own interests, if the details of those programs were revealed,” said Greenwald, who has previously said the documents have been encrypted to help ensure their safekeeping.
On Friday, Snowden, 30, emerged after weeks of hiding in a Moscow airport and said he was willing to meet President Vladimir Putin’s condition that he stop leaking U.S. secrets if it means Russia would grant him asylum until he can move on to somewhere in Latin America.
Snowden is believed to be stuck in the transit area of Moscow’s main international airport, where he arrived from Hong Kong on June 23. Although he has had asylum offers from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, the logistics of reaching whichever country is complicated since his U.S. passport has been revoked.
Despite his predicament, Snowden remains “calm and tranquil,” Greenwald said.
“I haven’t sensed an iota of remorse or regret or anxiety over the situation that he’s in,” said Greenwald. “He’s of course tense and focused on his security and his short-term well-being to the best extent that he can, but he’s very resigned to the fact that things might go terribly wrong and he’s at peace with that.”
Greenwald said he worried that interest in Snowden’s personal saga had detracted from the impact of his revelations, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Edward Snowden has highly sensitive documents on how the National Security Agency is structured and operates that could harm the U.S. government, but has insisted that they not be made public, a journalist close to the NSA leaker said.
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist with The Guardian newspaper who first reported on the intelligence leaks, told The Associated Press that disclosure of the information in the documents “would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”
He said the “literally thousands of documents” taken by Snowden constitute “basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built.”
“In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,” the journalist said Sunday in a Rio de Janeiro hotel room. He said the interview was taking place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden.
Greenwald said he believes the disclosure of the information in the documents would not prove harmful to Americans or their national security, but that Snowden has insisted they not be made public.
“I think it would be harmful to the U.S. government, as they perceive their own interests, if the details of those programs were revealed,” he said.
He has previously said the documents have been encrypted to help ensure their safekeeping.
Snowden emerged from weeks of hiding in a Moscow airport Friday, and said he was willing to meet President Vladimir Putin’s condition that he stop leaking U.S. secrets if it means Russia would give him asylum until he can move on to Latin America.
Greenwald told The AP that he deliberately avoids talking to Snowden about issues related to where the former analyst might seek asylum in order to avoid possible legal problems for himself.
Snowden is believed to be stuck in the transit area of Moscow’s main international airport, where he arrived from Hong Kong on June 23. He’s had offers of asylum from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, but because his U.S. passport has been revoked, the logistics of reaching whichever country he chooses are complicated.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Bolivia’s leftist president Evo Morales on Saturday accused US intelligence of hacking into the email accounts of top Bolivian officials, saying he had shut his own account down.
Latin American leaders have lashed out at Washington over recent revelations of vast surveillance programs, some of which allegedly targeted regional allies and adversaries alike.
Bolivia has joined Venezuela and Nicaragua in offering asylum to Edward Snowden, the former IT contractor for the US National Security Agency who publicized details of the programs and is now on the run from espionage charges.
Morales said that he learned about the alleged US email snooping at the Mercosur regional summit in Montevideo earlier this week.
“Those US intelligence agents have accessed the emails of our most senior authorities in Bolivia, Morales said in a speech.
“It was recommended to me that I not use email, and I’ve followed suit and shut it down,” he said.
Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told the same summit that more than 100 of his country’s officials were under electronic surveillance from a nation he did not name.
Bolivia’s Morales, who has long had a thorny relationship with the United States, speculated that Washington hoped to use the information in the emails to plan a future “invasion” of his country.
His allegations followed a diplomatic dust-up last week when, during a flight home from Moscow, European authorties diverted Morales’s plane to Austria and searched it after rumours that he had Snowden on board.
Morales renewed his offer of asylum to Snowden on Saturday, saying La Paz would follow all “diplomatic norms and international accords” in the case.
The 30-year-old intelligence leaker has been stranded in an airport transit zone in the Russian capital since June 23.
Snowden is seeking to avoid US espionage charges for revealing vast surveillance programs to collect phone and Internet data.
US authorities say the revelations threatened national security, insisting the secret programs are fully legal and have helped foil dozens of terrorist attacks.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
America is pivoting to Asia and focused on the Mideast. Yet the region Secretary of State John Kerry once called the U.S. “backyard” is sprouting angry weeds fed by the scandal involving intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have already said they’d be willing to grant asylum for Snowden, who is wanted on espionage charges for revealing the scope of National Security Agency surveillance programs that spy on Americans and foreigners. Ecuador has said it would consider any request from him.
U.S. relations with these countries were already testy. But the Snowden affair also has dampened the Obama administration’s effort to improve ties with friendlier nations in the region like Mexico and Brazil.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Russian immigration officials say they have not received an application from Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency leaker who wants to get asylum in Russia.
Snowden came to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport on June 23 from Hong Kong, apparently intending to board a flight to Cuba. But he did not get on that flight and is believed to have spent the last three weeks marooned in the airport’s transit zone.
On Friday, he met there with human rights activists and said he would seek Russian asylum, at least as a temporary measure before going to Venezuela, Bolivia or Nicaragua, all of which have offered him asylum.
But the Interfax news agency quoted Russian migration service head Konstantin Romodanovsky as saying no asylum request had been received as of Saturday.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
South American leaders defended their right to offer asylum, venting anger at claims of US spying in the region while intelligence leaker Edward Snowden’s fate hangs in the balance.
Washington wants Snowden, currently in limbo in Moscow, arrested for disclosing details of the massive US electronic intelligence operations around the world.
Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua — all run by leftist governments — have offered Snowden asylum. The 30-year-old US fugitive however told rights activists in Moscow on Friday that he would seek interim refuge in Russia.
Four European countries also came under attack in Montevideo at a summit of Mercosur, the regional bloc, for shutting off their airspace and holding up a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales, apparently on suspicion that Snowden was aboard.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also called for stronger regional cyber-security after documents leaked by Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, allegedly show that Washington has engaged in a mass of electronic spying in several Latin American countries.
The Mercosur leaders issued a statement reaffirming “the inalienable right of every state to grant asylum,” a right which, they said, “must not be restricted or curbed”.
“It is fundamental to ensure that the right of asylum seekers to travel safely to the country granting asylum be guaranteed,” they added, in a thinly veiled reference to US pressure to block Snowden’s possible departure from Russia to Venezuela.
The South American leaders rejected “any attempt at pressure, harassment or criminalization by a state or third parties” in response to a decision to grant asylum.
They demanded “an immediate end to such practices and explanations as to their motivation and their consequences.”
They also plan to push for the adoption of Internet regulatory rules, with an emphasis on cyber-security “to guarantee the protection of communications and preserve the sovereignty of states.”
Snowden has been stranded at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since arriving on a flight from Hong Kong on June 23. His US passport has since been revoked.
Mercosur leaders also said they would recall their ambassadors from Spain, France, Italy and Portugal for consultations in protest at the four nations’ decisions to close their airspace to the plane carrying Morales last week.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, whose country was reportedly a key target for US electronic surveillance, slammed NSA activities disclosed by the O Globo newspaper.
It is time for Mercosur “to set a limit… We must adopt pertinent measures to avoid a repetition of such situations,” she said.
Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told the summit that more than 100 of his country’s officials were under electronic surveillance from a nation he did not name.
“I received less than an hour ago from a country present in this room the names (of the targeted officials) with their emails and passwords,” he said.
And Argentine President Cristina Kirchner said Morales’ airplane holdup raised fears that her presidential plane could be impounded over a debt dispute.
“If I am aboard, I don’t know if they won’t seize me as well,” she said. “There are new forms of colonialism, more subtle than those practiced centuries ago.”
In January, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden said he wanted to claim asylum in Russia until he can travel on to Latin America, as Washington kept up the pressure with a warning to Moscow.
In his first encounter with the outside world since becoming stranded at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport three weeks ago, Snowden met Russian rights activists and lawyers.
He is still looking for a safe haven from US attempts to extradite him to face espionage charges for disclosing extensive American surveillance activities.
Washington warned Moscow against allowing Snowden to stay in the country and continue his embarrassing revelations.
President Barack Obama spoke by phone with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Friday, as previously scheduled. No details were released but the White House had said Snowden would be discussed.
“Providing a propaganda platform for Mr Snowden runs counter to the Russian government’s previous declarations of Russia’s neutrality,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
“It’s also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr Snowden to further damage US interests.”
Carney renewed a US call on Russia to expel Snowden so that he could be returned to American soil to face trial for leaking US national security secrets.
Amateur footage aired on television showed Snowden dressed in a grey shirt and looking relaxed as he read out a statement.
“I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future,” he told his audience, which included representatives from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
“That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets,” said the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor.
Snowden, who has no official travel documents, said he hoped Russia would accept his renewed asylum request so he could then work out a way to travel legally to Latin America.
Although most countries to which he has applied for asylum have rejected his request, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have all indicated they would be open to offering Snowden a safe haven.
Human Rights Watch senior researcher Tanya Lokshina, who attended Friday’s meeting, said the US embassy in Moscow had asked her to pass a message to Snowden.
The message was that they did not consider him a whistleblower and he had broken the law, she said.
But Snowden, in his statement, said the US intelligence service’s covert surveillance activities violated not just the US constitution but the UN declaration of human rights.
In denouncing what he saw as illegal activities, “I did what I believed right…”, he added.
His statement was posted online by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
Latin American leaders defended their right to offer asylum to Snowden at a summit of the regional bloc Mercosur held in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo.
That included the right of safe passage for those granted asylum to the country offering them refuge, said a Mercosur statement.
Mercosur also condemned an incident earlier this month when several European countries denied airspace to Bolivian President …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By Robert W. Wood, Contributor
Well, is the U.S. tax system competitive? Many global companies say it isn’t. In his recent Senate testimony, Apple AAPL -0.52% CEO Tim Cook distanced Apple from tax gimmicks, but the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee report on Apple paints a grim picture. Many companies are even more aggressive and say our tax system is at fault. See Apple: Think Different. Tax Different.
Individuals complain too. U.S. citizens and permanent residents must report their worldwide income. Of late, that rule has landed many in hot water. Forget Wesley Snipes–Judge Gives ’5 Second Probation’ In $21M Tax Case. Americans living abroad and dual citizens are hit especially hard. See Expats Lobby For Tax on Residence, Not Worldwide Income.
Don’t believe them? Sara Keller and Deborah Schanz are German economists, but you have to hand it to them for their media savvy. They rate tax systems, good, bad and ugly. Everyone loves rankings. They have their own terminology too, Measuring Tax Attractiveness Across Countries.
Their Tax Attractiveness Index reflects the attractiveness of a country’s tax environment and the tax planning opportunities it offers. Like a kind of beauty pageant, their Tax Attractiveness Index covers 16 components of tax systems. OK, there is no tax system swimsuit competition.
They look at statutory tax rates, how dividends and capital gains are treated, withholding taxes, group tax regimes and more. They consider double tax treaties, thin capitalization rules, and controlled foreign company rules. But how they stir the pot to achieve rankings is no mere Gestalt approach.
The authors painstakingly quantify each tax factor. The Tax Attractiveness Index embraces 100 countries and examines 2005 to 2009. By comparing the Tax Attractiveness Index with the statutory tax rate, the authors claim, they can show that even high tax countries can offer favorable tax conditions.
Clearly, then, mere tax rates don’t reveal a country’s tax climate. There are many other factors besides rates. And how do we Americans stack up in the tax rankings?
Not well. Try 94 out of 100, just below Zimbabwe. Even Japan beat us, coming in at a rousing 92nd. On the brighter side, we might be mollified to know that we did beat a few. As DANIEL J. MITCHELL notes here, America’s Corporate Tax System Ranks a Miserable 94 out of 100, “the “good news” is that we beat out Argentina and Venezuela, two of the world’s most corrupt and despotic nations.”
Tax reform isn’t out of the question, of course. Still, this rank is pretty dismal. Even for individuals, when CNN reports U.S. Citizens Ditching Passports in Record Numbers, it must be true. Like CNN’s election night coverage, the stats don’t lie.
With over 670 U.S. citizens saying sayonara in the first 90 days of 2013, it’s shaping up to be the year of the expat. See also Q1 2013 – Highest Quarterly Number of Expatriates Ever (But…).
You can reach me at Wood@WoodLLP.com. This discussion is not intended as legal advice, and cannot be relied upon for any purpose without the services of a qualified professional.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Venezuelan authorities say they have formally charged an American filmmaker they accuse of paying right-wing groups to foment postelection unrest on behalf of U.S. intelligence.
The federal prosecutor’s office said Timothy Tracy, 35, of West Hollywood, California, was formally charged Saturday night with crimes including conspiracy, association for criminal purposes and use of a false document.
Friends say Tracy is an innocent, self-funded documentary filmmaker with no political aims or government ties.
Separately, officials say they have arrested a retired general who had become a fierce critic of the government, a detention the opposition called part of a hardening crackdown in the wake of Venezuela‘s narrow and disputed April 14 election.
Retired Brig. Gen. Antonio Rivero had gained fame for denouncing Cuban involvement in the Venezuelan military in 2010 and then participated in postelection protests this month.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
On Tuesday, Valero will release its latest quarterly results. The key to making smart investment decisions on stocks reporting earnings is to anticipate how they’ll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you’ll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.
Refining stocks have done extremely well lately, with relatively cheap domestic crude fueling low input costs while high international prices for gasoline and other refined products widen crack spreads and boost profits for Valero and its peers. But how long can those good times continue? Let’s take an early look at what’s been happening with Valero over the past quarter and what we’re likely to see in its quarterly report.
Stats on Valero
|
Analyst EPS Estimate |
$0.98 |
|
Change From Year-Ago EPS |
216% |
|
Revenue Estimate |
$30.41 billion |
|
Change From Year-Ago Revenue |
(13.5%) |
|
Earnings Beats in Past 4 Quarters |
4 |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
Will Valero keep pressing higher this quarter?
Analysts have gotten even more optimistic on Valero’s earnings recently, raising their earnings-per-share estimates by $0.17 for the first quarter and by $0.30 for the full 2013 year. Yet even though the stock has posted an 8% gain since late January, it has pulled back considerably in the past month from more substantial gains.
Valero has been able to cash in on extremely strong conditions in the market for refined energy products, especially gasoline. In large part, international demand is to blame for continued high gasoline prices in the U.S., with Venezuela having become a huge new player in importing gasoline. Competitors are taking advantage, with rival Phillips 66 having boosted its exports by half in the fourth quarter of 2012 in order to maximize its benefit from those favorable conditions. Still, Valero has a huge share of between 20% and 25% of all the U.S. petroleum products that get sent abroad.
Yet Valero and its peers have seen new challenges pop up recently. Price spreads between U.S. West Texas intermediate and European Brent crude oil have narrowed considerably in April, threatening those wide margins. That’s especially bad news for HollyFrontier , Tesoro , and Valero, whose western-U.S. exposure has helped those companies benefit the most from cheap mid-continent crude supplies. Phillips 66’s recent deal to transport U.S. crude by rail may look a lot less lucrative if spreads narrow further, and Valero and the rest of the industry will inevitably see profits shrink if the financial incentive to export gasoline gets smaller.
Valero could also feel a big hit from regulation. Ethanol credits that Valero and other refiners are required to obtain have soared in cost lately, raising fears that the mandate for higher ethanol use will lead to higher prices at the pump for consumers and a big decrease
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Newly elected Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has shuffled his Cabinet, putting allies of late president Hugo Chavez in positions to tackle pressing problems including widespread power outages and double-digit inflation.
Maduro tapped Jesse Chacon to take charge of government initiatives aimed at upgrading Venezuela‘s power grid, which has been plagued with problems stemming from lack of investment and maintenance.
Many Venezuelans are fed up with blackouts that have been occurring for years around the South American country.
Maduro also announced late Sunday that Nelson Merentes, who had served as president of the central bank, would take the helm at the finance ministry.
Merentes will face the daunting task of reducing inflation, which reached topped 20 percent last year.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/aRaUgF-oFUQ/
Venezuela‘s top security official says authorities have caught an alleged drug trafficker wanted in neighboring Colombia on drug smuggling, kidnapping and extortion charges.
Justice Minister Nestor Reverol says soldiers and officials from Venezuela‘s National Anti-Drug Office detained Rigoberto Castellon on Sunday in the western state of Falcon.
Colombian and U.S. officials say the majority of cocaine smuggling flights bound for Mexico and Central America pass through Venezuela.
Reverol has repeatedly said Venezuelan authorities are doing everything possible to stem the flow of cocaine through the country.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/DCs5apzzxMU/
A top official from Venezuela‘s electoral council says the audit of the vote from last Sunday’s presidential election isn’t about “revising” the outcome and warned against “false expectations.”
Council Vice President Sandra Oblitas also said, however, that only the Supreme Court can change the outcome.
Her confusing appearance Saturday suggested difficulties ahead for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. He claims the election was stolen by Hugo Chavez‘s chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro.
An audit of the 46 percent of the vote not scrutinized on election night is to begin next week. Official results gave Maduro a 260,000-vote victory of 14.9 million votes cast.
Inaugurated Friday, Maduro spent much of Saturday with the presidents of Nicaragua and Cuba. He tweeted that he discussed plans for the nation’s future with them.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/A_qoF3jLUdo/
Argentine Mario Poli was inaugurated as the new archbishop of Buenos Aires on Saturday, taking over the post held by Jorge Bergoglio before he became Pope Francis.
Poli, 66, was named to the position by Francis in late March and Vatican envoy Emil Paul Tscherrig welcomed him in the name of the pope in the ceremony at the capital’s metropolitan cathedral, saying the pontiff “accompanies us from Rome.”
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, who was traveling in Peru and Venezuela, did not attend the ceremony but several of her Cabinet ministers did.
“The arrival of the replacement for Bergoglio generates enthusiasm, expectations and hope, and we wish him the best in his pastoral activities in Buenos Aires,” said Julian Dominguez, the head of the Chamber of Deputies.
Poli is a priest very much in Francis’ vein, focused on pastoral work. He has been the bishop in Santa Rosa in the rural La Pampa province, and from 2002-2008 he served as one of then-Cardinal Bergoglio‘s auxiliary bishops in Buenos Aires, but he was not among the church officials rumored to be top candidates for the post.
He has a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Argentina, but before he was ordained as a priest in 1978, he earned a degree in social work from the public University of Buenos Aires, known as UBA. That apparently impressed Bergoglio, who talked about the benefits of such training in a 2012 book, “On Heaven and Earth.”
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/sq6v14x2kws/
The Obama administration warned Friday that nations such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela are turning up pressure on human rights other activists, decrying what it described as a global crackdown on the “lifeblood of democratic societies.”
In its annual human rights report, the State Department criticized a host of new restrictions on advocacy groups including laws banning free speech, assembly and religion. Even worse, it noted that human rights, political and labor leaders in more countries were facing harassment, arrest and even assassination.
“Civil society is the lifeblood of democratic societies,” the report said. “Countries succeed or fail based on the choices of their people and leaders — whether they sit in a government ministry, a corporate boardroom, an independent union or a cramped NGO office. When individuals have the ability to come together, air their views and put forward their own proposals, they challenge and support their governments in reaching higher standards of progress and prosperity.”
At a briefing, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters he considered canceling the release of the report because of the intensity of the manhunt for the suspect in the Boston marathon bombing but said he decided to release it because “people have the right to run in marathons.”
The report singled out for criticism a series of new Russian laws that target groups receiving international funding and restrict “unauthorized protests” and Internet freedom.
Bangladesh was cited for suppressing labor rights while Egypt was criticized for continuing to put pressure on domestic and foreign non-governmental organizations after raiding the offices of pro-democracy groups in 2011. China imposed new registration requirements to prevent groups from emerging that might challenge government authority.
Other trends cited in the report included:
— Uneven progress in the Middle East as protests turned to politics, with increased violence against women and religious minorities. The worst cases were civil war-wracked Syria, where 70,000 people have been killed over the past two years, and Iran, which executed 523 people last year and whose government attacks journalists, students, lawyers, artists, women and ethnic activists.
— An emergent democratic transition in Myanmar, also known as Burma, even if many legacies of the military’s authoritarianism remain. These include its repressive laws, pervasive security apparatus, corrupt judicial system and limits on freedom of religion. Inter-ethnic violence persists.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/64j0Ir4AuiQ/
Venezuela‘s electoral council says it will audit the 46 percent of the vote not scrutinized on election night, a surprise concession that opposition candidate Henrique Capriles says will prove that he won the presidency.
“We are where we want to be,” a satisfied but cautious-looking Capriles told a news conference after the Thursday night announcement. “I think I will have the universe of voters needed to get where I want to be.”
Capriles had demanded a full vote-by-vote recount but said he accepted the National Electoral Council‘s ruling, which marked a surprising turnabout for President-elect Nicolas Maduro, whose socialist government had a day earlier looked to be digging in its heels.
The late President Hugo Chavez‘s heir is being inaugurated on Friday and was in Lima, Peru, on Thursday night for an emergency meeting of South American leaders to discuss his country’s electoral crisis.
The meeting began late and it was not clear whether any of the continent’s other leaders — Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff wields the most influence — had pressured Maduro to accept the audit.
Capriles ducked the question when asked by an Associated Press reporter for his explanation of the concession.
In a declaration released after the 3 1/2-hour meeting, the South American presidents asked “all parties who participated in the election to respect the official results” and said they “took positive note” of the electoral council’s audit decision.
Maduro, in a Twitter message, proclaimed the meeting a “great success.”
“Complete support for the people and democracy of Venezuela,” Maduro continued. “Thank you South America! I await you in Caracas.”
Maduro had never rejected the audit publicly, and it was possible pressure from the military or more moderate members of his ruling clique were a factor. Maduro heads a faction believed to be more radical.
The so-called Chavistas control all the levers of power in Venezuela, so the electoral council’s decision can only be seen as having the government‘s imprimatur.
A petition to halt Maduro’s inauguration had been rejected earlier Thursday by the country’s highest court.
Opposition supporters
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/lvvt2GDwezI/
A spokesman for Haiti‘s prime minister says an airport in the country’s north has been renamed for the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Gary Bodeau says the Cap-Haitien International Airport will now be called the Hugo Chavez International Airport. Bodeau is a spokesman for Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe.
The airport’s 17,500-foot runway was repaved in October with Venezuelan money.
Venezuela has been one of Haiti‘s biggest supporters. Venezuela pledged $1.2 billion for Haiti, more than any other country, following the 2010 earthquake but has released just $222 million.
President Michel Martelly left Haiti Thursday to attend the inauguration for Venezuelan President-elect Nicolas Maduro.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/RLH7AZQ4PcY/
![Gulf CEO says oil prices could halve by end of year, cause global instability [w/video]](http://bd.summit.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/407649-thumb-320x200.jpg)
