U.S. coal exports soar, in boost to Trump energy agenda, data shows

U.S. coal exports have jumped more than 60 percent this year due to soaring demand from Europe and Asia, according to a Reuters review of government data, allowing President Donald Trump's administration to claim that efforts to revive the battered industry are working.

The increased shipments came as the European Union and other U.S. allies heaped criticism on the Trump administration for its rejection of the Paris Climate Accord, a deal agreed by nearly 200 countries to cut carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like coal.

The previously unpublished figures provided to Reuters by the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed exports of the fuel from January through May totaled 36.79 million tons, up 60.3 percent from 22.94 million tons in the same period in 2016. While reflecting a bounce from 2016, the shipments remained well-below volumes recorded in equivalent periods the previous five years.

They included a surge to several European countries during the 2017 period, including a 175 percent increase in shipments to the United Kingdom, and a doubling to France - which had suffered a series of nuclear power plant outages that required it and regional neighbors to rely more heavily on coal.

"If Europe wants to lecture Trump on climate then EU member states need transition plans to phase out polluting coal," said Laurence Watson, a data scientist working on coal at independent think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative in London.

Nicole Bockstaller, a spokeswoman at the EU Commission's Energy and Climate Action department, said that the EU's coal imports have generally been on a downward trend since 2006, albeit with seasonable variations like high demand during cold snaps in the winter.

Overall exports to European nations totaled 16 million tons in the first five months of this year, up from 10.5 million in the same period last year, according to the figures. Exports to Asia meanwhile, totaled 12.3 million tons, compared to 6.2 million tons in the year-earlier period.

Trump had campaigned on a promise to "cancel" the Paris deal and sweep away Obama-era environmental regulations to help coal miners, whose output last year sank to the lowest level since 1978. The industry has been battered for years by surging supplies of cheaper natural gas, brought on by better drilling technologies, and increased use of natural gas to fuel power plants.

His administration has since sought to kill scores of pending regulations he said threatened industries like coal mining, and reversed a ban on new coal leasing on federal lands.

Taking Credit

Both the coal industry and the Trump administration said the rising exports of both steam coal, used to generate electricity, and metallurgical coal, used in heavy industry, were evidence that Trump's agenda was having a positive impact.

"Simply to know that coal no longer has to fight the government - that has to have some effect on investment decisions and in the outlook by companies, producers and utilities that use coal," said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.

Shaylyn Hynes, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Energy Department, said: "These numbers clearly show that the Trump Administration's policies are helping to revive an industry that was the target of costly and job killing overregulation from Washington for far too long."

Efforts to obtain comment from exporters Arch Coal (ARCH.N) and privately held Murray Energy Corp were unsuccessful. Contura Energy, which emerged as part of Alpha Natural Resource's bankruptcy and restructuring, and filed for public offering in May, declined to comment.

A spokesman for Peabody Energy, the largest coal producer, though without a major export profile, said the United States was generally a "swing supplier of seaborne coal."

U.S. Energy Information Administration analyst Elias Johnson said the U.S. coal industry may now be better positioned to meet foreign demand because U.S. miners have learned to produce at lower cost, after coming through a series of recent bankruptcies.

"There's the possibility that the U.S. will become more of a primary player in the global coal trade market," he said.

But he added there are also plenty of reasons the spike in demand could be temporary. For one thing, U.S. coal production and transportation costs are much higher than for other producers such as Indonesia and Australia.

Because coal can often be transhipped from European ports before it is consumed, it is also hard to determine where shipments ultimately end up.

Johnson pointed out that some of the fuel shipped into Western Europe, for example, could be making its way to other places like Ukraine, which is having trouble securing coal from its separatist-held regions.

Trump said last month that his administration is offering more coal to Ukraine, but it was unclear how, given deals are typically worked out between companies.

Source: Reuters

Oil retreats after bull run, on rising OPEC exports, strong dollar

REUTERS/Kham

Oil prices fell more than 1 percent on Wednesday, ending their longest bull-run in more than five years, as climbing OPEC exports and a stronger dollar turned sentiment more bearish.

Benchmark Brent crude futures were down 57 cents, or 1.2 percent, at $49.04 a barrel by 1020 GMT. Prices had climbed for eight straight sessions to Monday.

U.S. WTI crude futures were down 63 cents, or 1.3 percent, at $46.44 a barrel after reaching a one-month high of $47.32 earlier in the session.

"The air is getting thin for oil prices. The price increase just ran out of steam, which is not very surprising, given the newsflow of rising OPEC supplies," said Carsten Fritsch, senior commodity analyst at Commerzbank.

Another analyst said the strong dollar provided less incentive to invest in greenback-denominated commodities such as crude oil.

Oil exports by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries climbed for a second month in June, Thomson Reuters Oil Research data showed.

OPEC exported 25.92 million barrels per day (bpd) in June, up 450,000 bpd from May and 1.9 million bpd more than a year earlier.

The rise in exports comes despite OPEC's vow to rein in production until March 2018 and follows hot on the heels of Reuters' monthly OPEC production survey which found output jumped to a 2017 high last month as OPEC members Nigeria and Libya continued to pump more.

Nigeria and Libya are both exempt from the output pact.

The head of the International Energy Agency told Reuters that rising output from key oil producers could hamper expectations that the oil market would rebalance in the second half of the year.

Traders were also eyeing weekly U.S. crude inventory data, delayed by a day due to the U.S. public holiday on Tuesday.

A Reuters poll showed analysts expected weekly crude stocks to have fallen by 2.8 million barrels. The weekly data showed a surprise rise in inventories last week.

Underlining an expected shift in longer term oil demand, car group Volvo said on Wednesday that from 2019 all of its new models would be fully electric or hybrid vehicles.


Source: Reuters

U.S. breaks with G7 on climate, development banks

The United States refused to sign up to the Group of Seven major industrialized economies' statement on climate change and plans to fund sustainable development, a statement from the group's environment ministers said on Monday.

The U.S. said it did not sign up to statements by its G7 colleagues from Italy, Canada, Japan, France, Britain and Germany on climate change and multilateral development banks "reflecting our recent announcement to withdraw and immediately cease implementation of the Paris Agreement and associated financial commitments," the statement said.

"The United States will continue to engage with key international partners in a manner that is consistent with our domestic priorities, preserving both a strong economy and a healthy environment," it said.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw from the Paris climate change accord, saying that participating would undermine the economy, wipe out jobs, weaken U.S. national sovereignty, and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to others.

Source: Reuters

Saudi Arabia, Russia push to extend oil output cuts until March 2018

Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world's two top oil producers, agreed on Monday on the need to extend oil output cuts for a further nine months until March 2018 to rein in a global crude glut, pushing up prices.

The timing of the announcement ahead of OPEC's next official meeting on May 25 and the statement's strong wording surprised markets, and the move is expected to go a long way to ensure that other OPEC members and producers who participated in the initial round of cuts fall into line.

In a joint statement that followed an earlier meeting, Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih and his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak said they had agreed to prolong an existing deal until March next year.

The ministers pledged "to do whatever it takes" to reduce global inventories to their five-year average and expressed optimism they will secure support from producers beyond those in the current deal, the statement said.

"There has been a marked reduction to the inventories, but we're not where we want to be in reaching the five-year average," Falih told a briefing in Beijing alongside Novak.

"We've come to conclusion that the agreement needs to be extended."

Saudi, the defacto leader of OPEC, and Russia, the world's biggest producer, together control a fifth of global supplies, but have been spurred into action as crude futures LCOc1CLc1 have languished around $50 per barrel.

Under the current agreement that started on Jan. 1, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and other producers including Russia pledged to cut output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) during the first half of the year.

While it was broadly expected that OPEC and Russia would agree to extend the cut, the timing and wording of the statement sent crude prices up more than 1.5 percent in Asian trading.[O/R]

"I think OPEC and Russia recognize that in order to get the market back on their side they will need 'shock and awe' tactics where they need to go above and beyond a simple extension of the deal," said Virendra Chauhan, Singapore-based analyst at Energy Aspects.

"The market will also be looking at export cuts and not just production cuts, which is what is required to rebalance the market."

Russia's top producer Rosneft helped prepare the deal and is ready to comply with the extension, according to Russian media.

U.S. SHALE, THE UNKNOWN

If producers maintain their cuts at the current pace, it could push the market into a small deficit by the fourth quarter, said Edward Bell, director for commodity research at Emirates NBD in Dubai.

But one major unknown will be the response of low-cost U.S. shale producers, which could undermine the unified effort to prop up the market.

The United States did not participate in the original agreement to cut supplies and producers there have ramped up output this year, buoyed by the recovery in prices from multi-year lows hit in January 2016.

U.S. drilling activity RIG-OL-USA-BHI last week rose to its highest in two years, while U.S. production has jumped more than 10 percent since its mid-2016 trough.

A jump in U.S. exports to Asia, the world's biggest and fastest growing market and the last region in which OPEC supplies dominate, is a particular worry for the producer club.

"Russia and Saudi Arabia may be trying to coordinate a push to keep access to their most important market (China) in their favor and encourage Chinese importers to displace alternative cargoes," said Bell.

An OPEC source familiar with the market situation told Reuters earlier on Monday that oil inventories in floating storage have declined by one-third since the start of the year.

Source: Reuters

As Trump warned North Korea, his 'armada' was headed toward Australia

When U.S. President Donald Trump boasted early last week that he had sent an "armada" as a warning to North Korea, the aircraft carrier strike group he spoke of was still far from the Korean peninsula, and headed in the opposite direction.

It was even farther away over the weekend, moving through the Sunda Strait and then into the Indian Ocean, as North Korea displayed what appeared to be new missiles at a parade and staged a failed missile test.

The U.S. military's Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the strike group first had to complete a shorter-than-initially planned period of training with Australia. But it was now "proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered," it said.

The perceived communications mix-up has raised eyebrows among Korea experts, who wonder whether it erodes the Trump administration's credibility at a time when U.S. rhetoric about the North's advancing nuclear and missile capabilities are raising concerns about a potential conflict.

"If you threaten them and your threat is not credible, it's only going to undermine whatever your policy toward them is. And that could be a logical conclusion from what's just happened," said North Korea expert Joel Wit at the 38 North monitoring group, run by Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

The U.S. military initially said in a statement dated April 10 that Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of Pacific Command, directed the Carl Vinson strike group "to sail north and report on station in the Western Pacific."

Reuters and other news outlets reported on April 11 that the movement would take more than a week. The Navy, for security reasons, says it does not report future operational locations of its ships.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis initially appeared to play down the deployment on April 11, saying the Vinson was "just on her way up there because that's where we thought it was most prudent to have her at this time."

"There's not a specific demand signal or specific reason why we're sending her up there," he said.

But even Mattis initially misspoke about the strike group's itinerary, telling a news conference that the Vinson had pulled out of an exercise with Australia.

The Pentagon has since corrected the record, saying the ship's planned port visit to Fremantle, Australia, was canceled - not the exercise with Australia's navy.

Source: Reuters

Iran strongly condemns US bombing of Syrian airbase

The Iranian foreign ministry on Friday strongly condemned the bombing of a Syrian airbase by the United States, which it described as destructive and dangerous.

Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said that Tehran considered that the US using a chemical attack in Syria as a pretext for unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violation of the peremptory principles of international laws.

Source: EFE

After six decades, U.S. set to turn natgas exporter amid LNG boom

The last time the United States was a net exporter of natural gas was in 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower was president. That should change in 2018 when the country is expected to become the world's third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

By the end of next year, U.S. LNG export capacity in the lower 48 states will top 6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd), or 8 percent of the country's domestic consumption, up from zero at the beginning of 2016. Six bcfd of gas can fuel about 30 million U.S. homes, or almost every house in California, Texas and Florida combined.

That growth in U.S. LNG exports is set to transform world energy markets. Just a decade ago, before the shale revolution, the United States was expected to become a growing LNG importer, not an exporter, likely dependent on Russian, Middle East and North African gas, much as it has for decades depended on foreign crude.

Instead, the U.S. will become a competitor to the global gas powers by offering cheaper and more flexible cargoes and even a more politically palatable supplier to buyers such as the Europeans. The increased supply of North American LNG could bring more predictability to pricing through the development of more liquid trading markets.

"We are set to see unprecedented growth in U.S. LNG volumes over the next few years," said Andrew Walker, vice president strategy at Cheniere Marketing, a unit of U.S. LNG company Cheniere Energy Inc (LNG.A).

The U.S. shale revolution produced a massive increase in gas output through the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to extract fuel trapped in shale rocks. The only other countries soon expected to supply more LNG to the world are Australia and Qatar.

LNG is natural gas that has been liquefied at extremely low temperatures for ease of storage and transport, and is increasingly replacing dirtier fossil fuels such as coal and oil to heat homes and businesses and in power plants and other industrial facilities.

The U.S. started to export LNG from the lower 48 states when the first liquefaction train at the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, built by Cheniere, opened in February 2016. Five additional export terminals are expected to open by 2020, built by units of Dominion Resources Inc (D.N), Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI.N), Sempra Energy (SRE.N) and Freeport LNG.

Prior to this, the only natural gas exports from the lower 48 states were via pipeline to Mexico, and the U.S. was a net importer overall of natural gas from Canada.

Since opening the terminal, Cheniere's stock price has risen more than 50 percent, and in 2016 it reported record revenue of $1.28 billion, according to Reuters data. The company is expected to control more than half of the U.S. LNG export capacity by 2020, making it one of the nation's biggest buyers of physical gas.

Further upstream, big U.S. shale producers such as Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N), Cabot Oil and Gas Corp (COG.N), Range Resources Corp (RRC.N) and EQT Corp (EQT.N) are set to benefit from increased export demand.

Company spokesman Mike Mackin said Range Resources has signed multiple LNG export contracts, including with Cheniere, saying that the projects will "provide a significant source of incremental demand growth for the U.S."

World LNG demand is expected to double to about 71 bcfd by 2040, up from around 32 bcfd in 2015, the U.S. Energy Department estimates, driven by the rapidly growing economies in Asia, especially China and India.

Even though top LNG exporters Qatar and Australia are geographically better poised to supply the fuel at cheaper shipping costs, major energy firms such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L), Korea Gas Corp (036460.KS) and GAIL (India) Ltd (GAIL.NS) have already contracted to buy U.S. LNG.

In addition, European countries fearing supply disruptions from Russia have the potential of looking west. Moscow in the past has limited gas supply at periods of peak winter demand while seeking debt repayments from Ukraine.

The additional supply also means the potential for less reliance on some politically unstable Middle Eastern countries.

"It provides supplier diversification away from the Middle East, where much of the world's LNG supply now comes from as well as supply route diversification," said Jane Nakano, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

MATURING MARKET

Analysts said surging LNG exports - the biggest driver of North American gas demand - could boost U.S. gas prices, which have been low in recent years. However, higher prices would also encourage energy firms to boost production to record levels, which could keep price increases small.

Natural gas benchmark prices GT-HH-IDX have averaged $4.42 per million British thermal units over the last 10 years; in 2016, that average was $2.49, lowest since 1999. Even with exports, the price should remain far below that average for several years.

The maturation of the industry means buyers are looking for flexible contracts and the ability to hedge.

Last week, Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE.N) said it will introduce a spot contract for U.S. Gulf Coast LNG in May, while some large global LNG buyers, including Korea Gas and China's offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd (0883.HK), said they were banding together to secure flexible contracts.

LNG was historically sold in other parts of the world through long-term contracts tied to the price of oil. But of the 56 vessels that left Sabine Pass in 2016, 23 carried gas sold under spot transactions, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

"Growing use of spot market transactions will make the LNG market more flexible and responsive to supply and demand," said Craig Pirrong, a finance professor specializing in commodities at the University of Houston.

Source: Reuters

As oil industry perks up, worries grow over future staffing

Doug Lucas stood outside a Houston energy conference early one morning last month handing out resumes and hoping to catch the eye of oil executives with a hand-written sign advertising "Petroleum Eng. Hungry for job interview."

Cut from oilfield services firm Halliburton Co (HAL.N) in 2015, the 26-year-old temporarily turned to lawn care and cable-TV sales jobs while finishing a master's degree in petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California.

Despite relying on a depression-era sign for introductions, he is hopeful demand for petroleum professionals will come back.

"It's way better now than it was six or eight months ago," he said optimistically, as he solicited business cards from convention goers.

After a rout that began in 2014 due to a worldwide glut of oil in part caused by a U.S. shale boom, crude prices CLc1 have rebounded from 13-year lows hit a year ago and have held above $50 a barrel since the start of the year when major oil producers curbed output as part of a global deal. [O/R]

The higher prices have spurred an uptick in drilling activity as energy companies boost spending plans to take advantage of the crude price recovery. [RIG/U]

However, massive cuts that cost some 440,000 jobs globally at energy companies in the last two years have left veteran workers and skilled job-candidates without a clear future in oil and gas.

Unable to find work in their chosen field, some have turned their sights to technology or other industries, adding a note of uncertainty to next week's CERAWeek industry conference in Houston.

The outflow of experienced workers and a lack of hiring as oil companies drive to become more efficient could put future production growth in jeopardy, should a nascent upturn in the industry accelerate, say experts. In western Canada, companies resuming production of crude oil are struggling to rehire rig crews following job and pay cuts.

A University of Houston global survey of laid off oil workers found that 25 percent had already moved to another industry and another 55 percent were considering it. Only 13 percent of those polled in late 2016 had found energy jobs.

"A good number of people are 'lost' to other industries," said Christiane Spitzmueller, the study's principal investigator. "This will translate into high recruitment and training costs for new hires."

BRIGHTER TIMES AHEAD

The combined U.S. and Canadian rig counts, which can be an indicator of the health of the industry, jumped to 1,091 by Friday from 618 a year ago, a sign of the upturn in drilling in North America.

In western Canada, where many more rigs are working this year than last, drillers say a lack of experienced employees could slow their work later this year - or force them to pay higher salaries to lure workers back.

Dan Block, chief executive of Edmonton-based Jomax Drilling (1988) Ltd, said contractors he once employed took jobs in other industries, including construction.

"We are scrambling to bring people back," Block said.

Halliburton, an oil services firm that had about 50,000 employees at the end of 2016, down from more than 80,000 two years earlier, is now holding job fairs in regions where there is an uptick in drilling activity, such as Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Ohio, the company said.

"We're seeing a good balance of both experienced and entry level candidates," said spokeswoman Emily Mir, noting that there is strong applicant interest in open positions in the Permian Basin - one of the hottest drilling areas in the United States due to its favorable economics.

The U.S. oil and gas industry will need to fill 1.9 million new jobs through 2035, according to consultancy IHS Markit (INFO.O).

But filling those jobs could prove a challenge, management consultancy KCA said in study published in September.

"A rapid run-up is going to be a really difficult spot for the industry, versus a slow ramp up where you can start to lure people back over time," said David Skinner, KCA's chief executive.

The study by KCA, Pink Petro and Glexnet, which polled 1,000 laid off and working energy professionals, found that 45 percent of executives or board members said they were ready to seek other job options, retire or are unsure what they will do post-downturn.

Karsten Thompson, petroleum engineering department chair at Louisiana State University (LSU), said the loss of experienced executives will hurt the training of professional staff.

"Students will miss out on mentorship," he said in an interview.

If experienced workers are less inclined to stay through another economic cycle, younger workers may already be placing bets on other careers. Before oil prices crashed, the University of Texas placed more than 90 percent of students who majored in petroleum engineering into oil and gas jobs. In 2015 and 2016, that number fell by around a quarter.

LSU said its May 2016 engineering graduates reported fewer than 50 percent had found jobs, down from around 63 percent in 2013.

"In the past, for students with petroleum engineering jobs who couldn't find full time work, there were always opportunities to work offshore as a roustabout," said Trey Truitt, Associate Director for Employment Services at LSU.

"In this economy, those jobs haven't been available either."

TECHNOLOGY BECKONS

Despite a potential shortage of engineers, companies could still grow their businesses using existing staff augmented with newer technology and contract labor, said KCA.

Automation and technologies that require more software know-how are changing the skills needed by industry workers.

"Someone who majors in petroleum engineering with a minor in computer science, that might be the ideal engineer going forward," said John Graves, of energy consultancy Graves & Co.

Viet Pham, 23, a 2015 graduate from University of Texas at Austin's Petroleum Engineering program said if he could do it all over again, he would have majored in mechanical engineering or computer science.

Pham, who has been working at a retailer, is taking engineering courses at a community college to expand industry contacts and improve his professional job prospects.

"Petroleum is volatile," he said. "It's great when it works."

Source: Reuters

US officials downplay Trump's anti-immigration comments on Mexico

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Thursday downplayed the aggressive comments of President Donald Trump regarding stricter policies on illegal immigration in a tense visit to Mexico City, putting some of the responsibility for the problem on Central America.

"Let me be very, very clear: There will be no - repeat, no - mass deportations. Everything we do in DHS will be done legally and according to human rights and the legal justice system of the United States," Kelly said in a joint statement with Tillerson, along with Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray and Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.

Source: EFE

One month in, anti-Trump movement shows signs of sustained momentum

U.S. Representative Leonard Lance, who has held more than 40 town hall-style meetings with constituents in his central New Jersey district, has never faced a crowd like he did on Wednesday.

The Republican endured catcalls, chants and caustic questions from more than 1,000 residents at a local college, while hundreds of others outside brandished signs with messages like "Resist Trump."

Parallel scenes have played out across the country this week during the first congressional recess since Donald Trump became president. Republican lawmakers returning home confronted a wave of anger over a spectrum of issues, including immigration, healthcare and Trump's possible ties to Russia.

The raucous meetings are the latest in a relentless series of rallies, marches and protests that shows no signs of abating more than 30 days into the new administration.

The anti-Trump energy has prompted talk of a liberal-style Tea Party movement, in reference to the protests in 2009 that helped reshape the Republican Party and arguably laid the groundwork for Trump's surprise electoral victory last year.

"Some of the lessons to draw from that are persistence, repetition, not taking 'no' for an answer," said Victoria Kaplan, the organizing director for the grassroots progressive group MoveOn.

Since the day after Trump's inauguration, when millions of protesters joined women's marches worldwide, left-wing organizers have sought to harness that anger to fuel a lasting political campaign.

Hundreds of progressive groups have sprung up across the country - some affiliated with national organizations like Indivisible or MoveOn - to help coordinate.

At town halls in New Jersey and Virginia this week, constituents came armed with red "disagree" signs they held aloft to register their disapproval of what they heard from their representatives.

Some U.S. senators, such as Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, have faced weekly protests outside their offices, and a Pennsylvania healthcare network set up a "town hall" this week with an empty suit in place of Toomey, who declined to attend.

More marches are scheduled across the country in the coming months, including several major events in Washington, tied to gay rights, science and a push for Trump to release his tax returns.

The sheer volume of protests - last week, there were three nationwide calls for action within a five-day span - has some political observers wondering how long it can last.

But several experts who study protests said the level of outrage may be increasing, rather than subsiding, after a tumultuous first month in which Trump's words and actions created fresh outrage among liberals almost daily.

"We're not anywhere near reaching a saturation point for protest," said Michael Heaney, the author of "Party in the Street: The Antiwar Movement and the Democratic Party after 9/11" and a University of Michigan professor. "If anything, it's just getting started."

The key for organizers is to convert large-scale protests into sustained action by building databases of names and encouraging locally based events, experts said.

"You can't just have the diehards," said Dana R. Fisher, a University of Maryland professor who studies collective action. "And then you need to channel them into new types of activism."

When Fisher surveyed participants at the women's march in Washington, she found one-third were attending their first protest - the highest percentage she has ever observed.

"This is unprecedented," she said. "But there's nothing that's not unprecedented about the Trump presidency."

Some Republicans have dismissed the protests as manufactured. Trump on Tuesday tweeted that "so-called angry crowds" in Republicans' districts were "planned out by liberal activists."

But Kaplan of MoveOn said the vast majority of actions were "organic." A weekly conference call the group hosts to discuss the movement has attracted a bigger number of participants each week, with 46,000 people joining the latest discussion.

"We are firing on all cylinders to catch up" with grassroots protests, she said. "That is a demonstration of energy and sustainability."

Experts also said social media has made it far easier to organize mass protests quickly and efficiently.

In what Kaplan said was a sign the protests are having an impact, many Republicans have eschewed town halls this week to avoid confrontations. There were fewer than 100 in-person Republican town halls scheduled for the first two months of the year, compared with more than 200 in the same period in 2015, according to a Vice report.

In Louisiana on Wednesday, residents shouted down Republican Senator Bill Cassidy as he tried to explain his healthcare proposal. Scott Taylor, a freshman Republican representative in Virginia, sparred with hundreds of impassioned constituents on Monday at his own event.

Like Lance, whose district voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, Taylor is already a midterm target for Democrats. Taylor said in an interview after the town hall that he recognized many of the attendees from the local Democratic Party.

"It's not like they're just some new organic people who just came about and are concerned," Taylor said.

But not everyone was a Democrat. Austin Phillips, a 22-year-old Trump voter, told Taylor at the town hall he was worried about losing healthcare coverage if Obamacare is repealed.

"Trump has talked about wanting to repeal it," Phillips, who is self-employed and purchased insurance through an exchange created by the law, said in a later interview. "If they quickly repeal it with no replacement lined up, then theoretically everybody would lose their insurance."

Source: Reuters

Mike Pence faces calls to clarify US stance on EU during visit to Brussels

The United States vice president met several European Union senior officials in Brussels on Monday in a diplomatic bid to soothe concerns over US President Donald Trump's apparently dismissive attitude towards the bloc.

During his visit to the EU's seat of power, Mike Pence met with European Council president Donald Tusk, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

"Today it is my privilege on behalf of President Trump to express the strong commitment of the United States to continued cooperation and partnership with the European Union," said Pence during a joint press conference with Tusk.

He continued: "whatever our differences, our two continents share the same heritage, the same values and, above all, the same purpose; to promote peace and prosperity through freedom, democracy and the rule of law."

Pence reiterated his country's pledge to fight terror on a cooperative basis as well as its continued policy to hold Russia accountable for its actions in the Ukraine conflict_ a growing concern for some EU leaders who see Trump's approach to Moscow as soft.

Tusk said he had pressed Pence to clarify the US commitment to both the unity of the EU and the function of the trans-Atlantic Alliance.

Trump raised eyebrows in the international defense community when he described NATO as an "obsolete" organization and Tusk used the press conference on Monday to firmly reject this notion.

He went on to say the unity of the EU and the strength of NATO were cornerstones of the Western world and must, therefore, be protected.

Tusk said Pence had agreed with him on this point during their closed-door meeting but added that now "both Europeans and Americans must simply practice what they preach."

Several of the president's remarks have also sparked alarm among EU political officials, including his apparent support for Brexit and his recent suggestions that other EU member states may yet follow suit.

During his press conference with Pence, Juncker said: "I don't think that the moment has come to divide the US and the European Union."

The Luxembourgish politician said "global stability is heavily dependent on the good relations between the United States of America and the European Union. I think the US needs a strong, united EU on all possible issues."

In response, Pence said the US would continue to build on the cooperation and partnership it has with the EU.

Global stability, and more particularly the cooperative fight against international terror, was the principle theme of Pence's talks earlier with EU foreign policy representative Federica Mogherini.

In a statement following her meeting with the vice president, Mogherini said she "reaffirmed a strong willingness of the EU to continue building a strong EU-US partnership on the basis of clear values and interests."

They discussed at depth the mutual priorities such as the security threats posed by instability and conflict in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, and Afghanistan, among others.

Mogherini later took to Twitter where she described the encounter as an "Excellent meeting, good basis for our cooperation."

Mike Pence was due to meet the head of NATO while in Brussels, an organization to which he pledged the US' "unwavering support" during a speech over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

Source: EFE

Trump announces Judge Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court nominee

The United States President announced on Tuesday that he has selected Judge Neil Gorsuch as his nominee to fill the vacancy on the US Supreme Court and asked Senate Democrats to support his candidate, who will need at least eight votes from the opposition party to take the position.

"Today, I am keeping another promise to the American people by nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court," Donald Trump said Tuesday in a press conference at the White House.

Gorsuch, 49, who currently serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, was picked for "outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind and tremendous discipline", according to the US president.

Trump's candidate for the highest US federal court is a solid conservative who has defended the death penalty and religious freedom of individuals over government regulations.

Although he has never directly issued a ruling on abortion, Gorsuch has assured that there is no "constitutional basis" for placing the freedom of choice over the life of a baby.

"He is a man who our country really needs, and needs badly," Trump said.

"I only hope that both Democrats and Republicans can come together, for once, for the good of the country," he added.

To become the new Supreme Court Justice, Gorsuch needs to win a majority of 60 votes in the Senate, an obstacle that could be difficult to overcome since the Republicans have a majority of 52 seats in the upper house and would need the support of several Democrats.

Trump argued that Gorsuch, who graduated from prestigious Harvard Law School, Columbia and Oxford universities "could have had any job at any law firm for any amount of money, but what he wanted to do with his career was to be a judge, to write decisions, and to make an impact by upholding our laws and our Constitution".

One of the cases that catapulted Gorsuch to fame was his ruling in favor of the Hobby Lobby craft store after it filed a lawsuit against the federal government to ensure that it was not mandatory for the company to provide its employees insurance coverage for contraceptives, as established by the 2010 health care law by former US President Barack Obama.

If approved by the Senate, Gorsuch will fill the Supreme Court's vacancy left by the late conservative Judge Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.

To replace Scalia, one of the five high court conservative judges, Obama had nominated moderate judge Merrick Garland, but the majority of Senate Republican refused to consider the nominee.

Source: EFE

U.S.-Mexico crisis deepens as Trump aide floats border tax idea

The White House on Thursday floated the idea of imposing a 20 percent tax on goods from Mexico to pay for a wall at the southern U.S. border, sending the peso tumbling and deepening a crisis between the two neighbors.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced on Twitter around midday on Thursday that he was scrapping a planned trip to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly demanded that Mexico pay for a wall on the U.S. border.

Later in the day, White House spokesman Sean Spicer sent the Mexican peso falling to its low for the day when he told reporters that Trump wanted a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports to pay for construction of the wall.

Spicer gave few details, but his comments resembled an existing idea, known as a border adjustment tax, that the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives is considering as part of a broad tax overhaul.

The White House said later its proposal was in the early stages. Asked if Trump favored a border adjustment tax, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said such a tax would be "one way" of paying for the border wall.

"It's a buffet of options," he said.

The plan being weighed by House Republicans would exempt export revenues from taxation but impose a 20 percent tax on imported goods, a significant change from current U.S. policy.

"If you tax exports from Mexico into the United States, you're going to make things ranging from avocados to appliances to flat-screen tvs, you're going to make them more expensive," Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told reporters at the Mexican Embassy in Washington on Thursday night.

Countries like Mexico would not pay such taxes directly. Companies would face the tax if they import products made there into the United States, potentially raising prices for American consumers.

The idea is unpopular with retailers and businesses that sell imported goods in the United States. It also has met opposition from some lawmakers worried about the impact on U.S. consumers.

Trump himself appeared to pan the idea in a Wall Street Journal interview last week, saying the House border adjustment provision was "too complicated."

Even after Trump's comments, congressional Republicans have continued to discuss the issue with White House officials in an effort to bring them on board with the idea.

RIFT WITH MEXICO

Trump, who visited Republican lawmakers at their policy retreat in Philadelphia, told them he would use tax reform legislation to pay for the border wall.

"We're working on a tax reform bill that will reduce our trade deficits, increase American exports and will generate revenue from Mexico that will pay for the wall if we decide to go that route," he said.

Trump, who took office last week, views the wall, a major promise during his election campaign, as part of a package of measures to curb illegal immigration. Mexico has long insisted it will not heed Trump's demands to pay for the construction project.

He signed an executive order for construction of the wall on Wednesday. The move provoked outrage in Mexico. A planned meeting between Videgaray and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was canceled, a department spokeswoman said.

Videgaray said Mexico would work with Trump but that paying for the wall was out of the question.

"There are things that go beyond negotiation," he said. "This is about our dignity and our pride."

Pena Nieto, who had been under pressure to cancel the summit, tweeted on Thursday: "We have informed the White House that I will not attend the working meeting planned for next Tuesday with @POTUS."

Trump had tweeted earlier that it would be better for the Mexican leader not to come if Mexico would not pay for the wall. He said later the meeting was canceled by mutual agreement.

Relations have been frayed since Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, characterizing Mexican immigrants as murderers and rapists. His trade rhetoric has hit the Mexican economy, causing consumers to rein in spending and foreign businesses to wait on new investments, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Trump has vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and slap high tariffs on American companies that have moved jobs south of the border.

Mexico ships 80 percent of its exports to the United States, and about half of Mexico's foreign direct investment has come from its northern neighbor over the past two decades.

The United States runs a $58.8 billion trade deficit with Mexico, according to the latest U.S. government figures. But Mexico is also the United States' second-largest export market.

Source: Reuters

NATO, Russia and trade top the agenda for Trump talks with Britain's May

U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who share an unusual bond as the products of anti-establishment uprisings, will sit down on Friday for what could be a difficult search for unity on NATO, Russia and trade.

The meeting will mark Trump’s first with a foreign leader since taking power a week ago, and it could go a long way toward determining how crucial Trump considers the traditional “special relationship” between the two countries.

Trump rode an anti-Washington wave to win on Nov. 8, and May gained power in July after the "Brexit" vote that has put her country on a path to separate from the European Union. The meeting will conclude with a joint White House news conference.

Trump has declared NATO obsolete and expressed a desire for warmer ties with Russia. May considers the trans-Atlantic alliance crucial and is skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

They both want to begin work on a bilateral trade agreement, which for May would provide proof of stability amid the Brexit breakup and for Trump would support his belief that he can negotiate one-on-one trade pacts.

"They both need this to be a success," said Heather Conley, a European expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Trump, she said, "needs to demonstrate that he has a command of issues" while May "needs to hear strong messages of support for her vision of a Britain that works for everyone, a global Britain."

May, in a speech to Republican lawmakers gathered in Philadelphia on Thursday, suggested she saw the need for some reforms in NATO and for more countries to pay more to the alliance to help fund it, which has been Trump's main complaint about NATO.

"America’s leadership role in NATO – supported by Britain – must be the central element around which the alliance is built," May said.

But she said that EU nations "must step up" to ensure NATO remains the cornerstone of the West's defense.

Trump and May also seem somewhat at odds over how to deal with Russia. In her speech, May said Western leaders should "engage but beware" of Putin and should not accept Putin's claim that Eastern Europe is now in his sphere of influence.Trump, on the other hand, wants a strong U.S. relationship with Russia to fight Islamic State militants.

"I don't know Putin, but if we can get along with Russia, that's a great thing," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity" on Thursday. "It's good for Russia, it's good for us."

Source: Reuters

Brazil plans to waive visas for visitors from U.S., Japan

Brazil's government is considering waiving visas for visitors from the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia to boost tourism, and could eventually extend the plan to include China, a tourism ministry spokesman said on Monday.

The proposal by new Tourism Minister Marx Beltrão would extend for a 12-month trial period a visa-waiver program adopted for visitors from the four countries during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this year.

Brazil's President Michel Temer is keen to draw more foreign investment and visitors to Brazil to help pull Latin America's largest nation from its worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression.

In 2015, 575.800 U.S. citizens visited Brazil, less than 10 percent of the total number of visitors to the South American nation. Meanwhile, the number of Brazilians visiting the United States soared in recent years to 2.6 million visitors in 2014.

The visa exemptions would become permanent if the number of tourists rises significantly and the governments of the four countries reciprocate by removing visa requirements for Brazilians visitors, the spokesman said.

The minister's proposal still needs approval by other departments of the Brazilian government, particularly the foreign ministry which issues the visas and has demanded reciprocity to exempt U.S. citizens from needing visas.

Visitors from most Latin American and European Union nations, and Russia, do not need visas to travel to Brazil, but U.S. travelers have to cough up $160 for a visa to visit Brazil, an identical fee charged to Brazilians for visas to visit the United States.

The Brazilian fee was levied in retaliation for exclusion of Brazil from the U.S. visa waiver program.

The tourism ministry is studying the inclusion of several other countries in its visa waiver plan, mainly China to try to attract some of the 100 million Chinese tourists that travel abroad each year, the spokesman said.

Only 55,000 Chinese citizens visited Brazil last year.

Source: Reuters

U.S.-Russian crew blasts off for space station

A U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off from Kazakhstan on Wednesday for a two-day journey to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz space ship carrying NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Russians Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 14:05 local time (0805 GMT) and reached orbit about eight minutes later.

It will travel in space for two days before docking at the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

The trio will replace three ISS crew members - Kate Rubins of NASA, Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency - who are due to return to Earth on Oct.29.

Wednesday's launch was originally scheduled for Sept.23, but was postponed because of technical problems with the Soyuz that have since been fixed.

Source: Reuters

Obama congratulates Bob Dylan, one of his "favorite poets," on Nobel

President Barack Obama on Thursday congratulated musician and songwriter Bob Dylan, one of his "favorite poets," for being awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.

"Congratulations to one of my favorite poets, Bob Dylan, on a well-deserved Nobel," Obama said on Twitter.

Source: EFE

U.S. further eases sanctions on Cuba

The U.S. government on Friday announced new measures to ease the economic embargo on Cuba, including rules that will promote joint medical research and help improve the Communist-ruled island's agricultural sector and infrastructure.

The Commerce and Treasury Departments unveiled the new amendments to the sanctions regime imposed on Cuba under a decades-old economic embargo.

Source: EFE

Hurricane Matthew batters Florida as it chugs up the coast

Hurricane Matthew, carrying winds of 120 miles per hour (195 kph), lashed Florida on Friday and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes as it hugged the state's Atlantic coast on a northward track after killing hundreds of people in Haiti.

Matthew, the first major hurricane to threaten a direct hit on the United States in more than a decade, triggered mass evacuations along the coast from Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina and North Carolina.

At 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), Matthew's eye, or center, was 35 miles (55 km) east of Cape Canaveral, home to the country's main space launch site.

"The winds are ferocious right now,” said Jeff Piotrowski, a 40-year-old storm chaser from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who was near Cape Canaveral early on Friday. “It’s fierce.”

The storm downed power lines and trees and destroyed billboards in Cape Canaveral, he said.

NASA and the U.S. Air Force, which operate the Cape Canaveral launch site, had taken steps to safeguard personnel and equipment. A team of 116 employees was bunkered down inside Kennedy Space Center's Launch Control Center to ride out the hurricane.

No significant damage or injuries were reported in West Palm Beach and other communities in south Florida where the storm had brought down trees and power lines earlier in the night, CNN and local media reported.

But Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told media he was concerned that relatively light damage in southern parts of the state could give people further north a false sense of security.

"People should not be looking at the damages they're seeing and saying this storm is not that bad," Fugate told NBC. Fugate also said people should be aware the hurricane carried more than just ferocious winds.

"The real danger still is storm surge, particularly in northern Florida and southern Georgia. These are very vulnerable areas. They've never seen this kind of damage potential since the late 1800s."

Speaking on NBC's "Today" program, Fugate said few people were really prepared for the storm's effects and that while it was too late for some to move to safer ground, those who could still evacuate now should do so, unless they were in areas affected by hurricane-force winds.

"It's still a very dangerous situation."

About 300,000 Florida households were without power, local media reported. In West Palm Beach, street lights and houses went dark and Interstate 95 was empty as the storm rolled through the community of 100,000 people.

Matthew lessened in intensity on Thursday night and into Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. From being an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, it became a Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, but was still a major storm.

It could either plow inland or tear along the Atlantic coast through Friday night, the Miami-based center said.

The National Hurricane Center warned of "potentially disastrous impacts" and the U.S. National Weather Service said the storm could be the most powerful to strike northeast Florida in 118 years.

Some 339 people were killed in Haiti, local officials said, and thousands were displaced after the storm flattened homes, uprooted trees and inundated neighborhoods earlier in the week. Four people were killed in the Dominican Republic, which neighbors Haiti.

Damage and potential casualties in the Bahamas were still unclear as the storm passed near the capital, Nassau, on Thursday and then moved out over the western end of Grand Bahama Island.

The NHC's hurricane warning extended up the Atlantic coast from southern Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina. More than 12 million people in the United States were under hurricane watches and warnings, according to the Weather Channel.

The last major hurricane, classified as a storm bearing sustained winds of more than 110 mph (177 kph), to make landfall on U.S. shores was Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

Source: Reuters

Ben Stiller reveals he had prostate cancer 2 years ago

U.S. actor Ben Stiller revealed on Tuesday that he suffered from prostate cancer two years ago but recovered and is now cancer-free because doctors detected it in time thanks to a routine exam.

"It came out of the blue for me. I had no idea. At first, I didn't know what was gonna happen. I was scared. It just stopped everything in your life because you can't plan for a movie because you don't know what's gonna happen," Stiller said on The Howard Stern Show.

Source: EFE