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Putin imposes oil ban on buyers complying with G7 price cap
Russia has hit back at the G7’s attempts to cap gains from the country’s oil revenues after Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning sales under contracts that comply with the $60 price ceiling imposed by Ukraine’s western allies. The decree, signed by Russia’s president and published on Tuesday, said the Kremlin would ban the sale of the country’s crude and crude-related products under contracts that “directly or indirectly imply a price cap mechanism”.
However, the decree says Putin “may grant special permission” to sell oil and oil products in certain circumstances even if purchasers comply with the cap — a wording that potentially paves the way for Russia to continue to sell crude to producers in markets such as India and China. The price cap, imposed in early December, aims to sap funding for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine by targeting the oil and gas revenues that makeup nearly half of Russia’s budget. In practice, the cap is yet to apply, with Urals, Russia’s main crude blend, selling at prices below $60 a barrel.
Russia has shrugged off the G7’s move, which primarily targets insurance for the oil shipments, and has assembled a “shadow fleet” of vessels that continues to ship its oil in response. Ten days after the cap took effect the Financial Times reported that at least seven crude oil tankers were sailing from Russia to India with western insurance, in what appeared to be trades executed under the terms of the G7 price cap. Putin’s move is less stringent than harsher options for retaliation floated in the Russian media, such as a “bottom” oil price or a minimum discount level for its sales.
The Kremlin’s decree comes into force on February 1 and will remain effective for five months, while the date for the similar measure on oil products is yet to be determined. Putin labelled the G7’s move “stupid and premature” in December, noting that Urals was already being sold at a discount to Brent, the global benchmark. After western nations moved to wind down their purchases of Russian oil and gas following the invasion of Ukraine in early February, Urals has commonly sold at levels below the cap.
Russia has offered generous discounts for the main importers of its oil, India and China. At present, Russia sells almost 80 per cent of its crude to Asia and only 17 per cent to Europe, two-thirds of which is transported through the Druzhba pipeline, according to figures from Kpler, a data provider. In the 10 months since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the spread of Urals crude against Brent has widened from the prewar standard of between $1 and $2 to the current level of between $20 and $30 a barrel. Even at $60, the cap is close to the $70-a-barrel price on which Russia’s 2023 budget is based, raising doubts about the cap’s effectiveness in limiting the Kremlin’s fossil fuel revenues.
Source: ft
Migrant Expulsion Policy Must Stay in Place for Now, Supreme Court Says
The temporary stay in lifting the pandemic rule known as Title 42 is a provisional victory for 19 states, led mostly by Republicans, that had sought to keep it in place on the border.
The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that a pandemic-era health measure that restricted migration at the southern border would remain in place for the time being, delaying the potential for a huge increase in unlawful crossings.
In a brief unsigned order, the justices halted a trial judge’s ruling that would have lifted the measure, known as Title 42, which has allowed even migrants who might otherwise qualify for asylum to be swiftly expelled at the border.
The court said that it would hear arguments in the case in February and that the stay would remain in place pending a ruling. The justices said they would address only the question of whether the 19 mainly Republican-led states that had sought the stay could pursue their challenge to the measure.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
President Biden said a decision on Title 42 was overdue, adding that in the meantime the public health order must be enforced.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said that the White House would be “advancing our preparations to manage the border in a secure, orderly and humane way when Title 42 eventually lifts and will continue expanding legal pathways for immigration.”
The decision comes as border towns have already been struggling with a swelling number of crossings by migrants from many countries, mainly in South America and Asia, whose nationals have not been subject to the expulsion policy. While temporary, the court decision offers a reprieve for the Biden administration, which had been preparing for the possibility of thousands of additional migrants a day, had the policy been lifted.
“The administration asked to end Title 42, but there was no clear plan for how they would have managed the inevitable influx,” said Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University who studies the politics of immigration.
“The ruling brings a sense of relief that officials may not publicly acknowledge,” he said.
The number of migrants apprehended at the southern border already surpassed 9,000 per day on three occasions in a 10-day span in December, a record number. About 1,500 people, mostly Nicaraguans who had been victims of a mass kidnapping in northern Mexico, crossed from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso on Dec. 11 alone, straining the city’s shelters and prompting migrant families to sleep on the streets in freezing temperatures.
Still, humanitarian organizations that operate shelters along the U.S. side of the border derided the court decision. They said it keeps in place a policy that is preventing migrants who are fleeing violence and persecution from obtaining the safe harbor to which they are entitled under U.S. and international law.
Source: nytimes
Why Southwest is melting down
A punishing winter storm that dumped multiple feet of snow across much of America led to widespread flight cancellations over the Christmas holiday. By Monday, air travel was more or less back to normal – unless you booked your holiday travel with Southwest Airlines.
More than 90% of Wednesday’s US flight cancellations were Southwest flights, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Southwest canceled more than 2,500 flights. The next highest: SkyWest, with 77.
Southwest warned that it would continue canceling flights until it could get its operations back on track. The company’s CEO said this has been the biggest disruption he’s seen in his career. The Biden administration is investigating.
What gives? Southwest had a combination of bad luck and bad planning.
The storm hit Chicago and Denver hard, where Southwest has two of its biggest hubs – Chicago Midway airport and Denver International airport.
More bad luck: The storm hit just as the so-called tripledemic surged across America, leaving people and their families sick with Covid, the flu and RSV. Although Southwest says it was fully staffed for the holiday weekend, illness makes adjusting to increased system stress difficult. Many airlines still lack sufficient staff to recover when events like bad weather cause delays or flight crews max out the hours they’re allowed to work under federal safety regulations.
Underinvestment
But Southwest (LUV) also hurt itself with an aggressive schedule and by underinvesting in its operations.
Southwest’s schedule includes shorter flights with tighter turnaround times, which are causing some of the problems, Kathleen Bangs, a FlightAware spokesperson, told CNN.
“Those turnaround times bog things down,” Bangs said.
Stranded customers have been unable to get through to Southwest’s customer service lines to rebook flights or find lost baggage.
Employees also said they have not been able to communicate with the airline, the president of the union that represents Southwest’s flight attendants told CNN Monday.
“The phone system the company uses is just not working,” Lyn Montgomery, President of TWU Local 556, told CNN’s Pamela Brown. “They’re just not manned with enough manpower in order to give the scheduling changes to flight attendants, and that’s created a ripple effect that is creating chaos throughout the nation.”
On a call with employees Monday, Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson explained that the company’s outdated scheduling software quickly became the main culprit of the cancellations once the storm cleared, according to a transcript of the call that was obtained by CNN from an aviation source.
The extreme cold, ice and snow grounded planes and left some crew members stranded, so Southwest’s crew schedulers worked furiously to put a new schedule together, matching available crew with aircraft that were ready to fly. But the Federal Aviation Administration strictly regulates when flight crews can work, complicating Southwest’s scheduling efforts.
“The process of matching up those crew members with the aircraft could not be handled by our technology,” Watterson said.
Southwest ended up with planes that were ready to take off with available crew, but the company’s scheduling software wasn’t able to match them quickly and accurately, Watterson added.
“As a result, we had to ask our crew schedulers to do this manually, and it’s extraordinarily difficult,” he said. “That is a tedious, long process.”
Watterson noted that manual scheduling left Southwest building an incredibly delicate house of cards that could quickly tumble when the company encountered a problem.
“They would make great progress, and then some other disruption would happen, and it would unravel their work,” Watterson said. “So, we spent multiple days where we kind of got close to finishing the problem, and then it had to be reset.”
In reducing the company’s flights by two thirds, Southwest should have “more than ample crew resources to handle that amount of activity,” Watterson said.
A lack of tools
The problems Southwest faces have been brewing for a long time, said Captain Casey Murray, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
“We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
He said the airline’s operations haven’t changed much since the 1990s.
“It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes – that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” he said.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, in a message to employees obtained by CNN, acknowledged many of Murray’s concerns, and promised the company will invest in better systems.
“Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools,” Jordan told employees. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”
He said the airline is “committed to and invested in” improving its systems, but “we need to be able to produce solutions faster.”
President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged consumers to check if they’re eligible for compensation as cascading airline delays have disrupted holiday travel across the country.
“Our Administration is working to ensure airlines are held accountable,” Biden tweeted.
The US Department of Transportation said it is investigating.
“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service,” the agency tweeted. “The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
To recover, Jordan told the Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over a third of its schedule in upcoming days to give itself the ability for crews to get into the right positions.
Not Southwest’s first rodeo
If this is all ringing a bell, that’s because this isn’t the first time Southwest’s service melted down in epic fashion. In October 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights over a four-day period, costing the airline $75 million.
Southwest blamed that service meltdown on a combination of bad weather in Florida, a brief problem with air traffic control in the area and a lack of available staff to adjust to those problems. It has admitted it was having service problems caused by short staffing even before the thousands of canceled flights stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Similar to this month’s service mayhem, Southwest fared far worse than its competitors last October. While Southwest canceled hundreds of flights in the days following the peak of October’s disruption, competitors quickly returned to normal service.
Later that month, on a call with Wall Street analysts, then-CEO Gary Kelly said the company had made adjustments to prevent a similar meltdown in the future.
“We have reined in our capacity plans to adjust to the current staffing environment, and our ontime performance has improved, accordingly,” said Kelly on October 21. “We are aggressively hiring to a goal of approximately 5,000 new employees by the end of this year, and we are currently more than halfway toward that goal.”
And, just like the latest disruption, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association claimed the cancellations were due to “management’s poor planning.”
Source: CNN
Houston’s most popular baby names of 2022 announced by Houston Health Department
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City of Houston Preparing for Freezing Weather Warming Centers will Open Thursday Afternoon
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Lone Star College recognized as top institution for minorities
Diverse Issues in Higher Education magazine has recognized Lone Star College as a top degree producer for minority students. LSC was ranked fourth in the nation, offering associate degrees to minorities.
“Lone Star College is committed to creating and offering world-class educational opportunities to all students,” said Stephen C. Head, Ph.D., LSC Chancellor. “We are pleased with this recognition and will continue to provide quality academic transfer and workforce programs to keep our community strong.”
LSC was also ranked fourth for the number of Hispanic students earning an associate degree, 10th for the number of Asian students earning a degree, and 13th nationwide for the number of African American students obtaining a degree.
Diverse Issues In Higher Education uses analysis from U.S. Department of Education reports submitted by institutions. Rankings are based on the review of 2020-21 preliminary data.
“These rankings prove Lone Star College is meeting the needs of our diverse community, helping all students to continue their education which can lead to a better life,” said Michael Stoma, LSCS Board of Trustees Chair.
Among the notable findings in the report:
- The number of associate degrees conferred to minority students in 2021 increased by 18,825 degrees compared to 2020-2021.
- Fifty-five percent of the associate degrees conferred to minority students were in arts & science.
- Liberal Arts & Sciences, General Studies and Humanities degrees were the top disciplines for associate degrees awarded to minority students.
LSC is continually recognized for its diversity efforts. In June 2022, the college was one of four organizations to receive the Outstanding Supplier Diversity Recognition Award from the Houston Business Journal.
Lone Star College has more than 200 programs and various resources, such as scholarships, student clubs and technology services, to help set all students up for success. LSC’s spring 2023 semester starts Jan. 17. Registration is now open at LoneStar.edu/Registration.
Lone Star College enrolls over 80,000 students each semester providing high-quality, low-cost academic transfer and career training education. LSC is training tomorrow’s workforce today and redefining the community college experience to support student success. Stephen C. Head, Ph.D., serves as chancellor of LSC, the largest institution of higher education in the Houston area and has been named a 2022 Great Colleges to Work For®institution by the Chronicle of Higher Education, ranked 35th in Texas in the Forbes ‘America’s Best Employers By State’ list and recognized by Fortune Magazine and Great Place To Work® as one of this year’s Best Workplaces in Texas™. LSC consists of eight colleges, seven centers, eight Workforce Centers of Excellence and Lone Star Corporate College. To learn more, visit LoneStar.edu.
FBI and Partners Issue National Public Safety Alert on Financial Sextortion Schemes
Over 3,000 minor victims targeted in the past year across the United States
The FBI, in partnership with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), is issuing a national public safety alert regarding an explosion in incidents of children and teens being coerced into sending explicit images online and extorted for money—a crime known as financial sextortion.
Over the past year, law enforcement has received over 7,000 reports related to the online financial sextortion of minors, resulting in at least 3,000 victims, primarily boys, and more than a dozen suicides. A large percentage of these sextortion schemes originate outside of the United States and primarily in West African countries such as Nigeria and Ivory Coast. As many children enter winter break this holiday season, the FBI and our partners implore parents and caregivers to engage with their kids about financial sextortion schemes so we can prevent them in the first place.
“The FBI has seen a horrific increase in reports of financial sextortion schemes targeting minor boys—and the fact is that the many victims who are afraid to come forward are not even included in those numbers,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “The FBI is here for victims, but we also need parents and caregivers to work with us to prevent this crime before it happens and help children come forward if it does. Victims may feel like there is no way out—it is up to all of us to reassure them that they are not in trouble, there is hope, and they are not alone.”
“The protection of children is a society’s most sacred duty,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “It calls on each of us to do everything we can to keep kids from harm, including ensuring the threats they face are brought into the light and confronted. Armed with the information in this alert message, parents, caregivers, and children themselves should feel empowered to detect fake identities, take steps to reject any attempt to obtain private material, and, if targeted, have a plan to seek help from a trusted adult.”
Financial sextortion schemes occur in online environments where young people feel most comfortable—using common social media sites, gaming sites, or video chat applications that feel familiar and safe. On these platforms, online predators often use fake female accounts and target minor males between 14 to 17 years old, but the FBI has interviewed victims as young as 10 years old.
“The sexual exploitation of children is a deplorable crime. HSI special agents will continue to exhaust every resource to identify, locate, and apprehend predators to ensure they face justice,” said Steve K. Francis, HSI acting executive associate director. “Criminals who lurk in platforms on the internet are not as anonymous as they think. HSI will continue to leverage cutting-edge technology to end these heinous acts.”
Through deception, predators convince the young person to produce an explicit video or photo. Once predators acquire the images, they threaten to release the compromising material unless the victim sends money or gift cards. Often the predators demand payment through a variety of peer-to-peer payment applications. In many cases, however, predators release the images even if payments are made. The shame, fear, and confusion that victims feel when they are caught in this cycle often prevents them from asking for help or reporting the abuse.
“This is a growing crisis and we’ve seen sextortion completely devastate children and families,” said Michelle DeLaune, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “As the leading nonprofit focused on child protection, we’ve seen first-hand the rise in these cases worldwide. The best defense against this crime is to talk to your children about what to do if they’re targeted online. We want everyone to know help is out there and they’re not alone.”
What if you or your child is a victim?
If young people are being exploited, they are victims of a crime and should report it. Contact your local FBI field office, call 1-800-CALL-FBI, or report it online at tips.fbi.gov.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has outlined steps parents and young people can take if they or their child are a victim of sextortion, including:
- Remember, the predator is to blame, not your child or you.
- Get help before deciding whether to pay money or otherwise comply with the predator. Cooperating or paying rarely stops the blackmail and continued harassment.
- Reportthe predator’s account via the platform’s safety feature.
- Blockthe predator and do not delete the profile or messages because that can be helpful to law enforcement in identifying and stopping them.
- Let NCMEC help get explicit images of you off the internet.
- Visit missingkids.org/IsYourExplicitContentOutThereto learn how to notify companies yourself or visit cybertipline.org to report to us for help with the process.
- Ask for help. This can be a very complex problem and may require help from adults or law enforcement.
- If you don’t feel that you have adults in your corner, you can reach out to NCMEC for support at gethelp@ncmec.orgor call NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST.
- Take a moment to learn how sextortion works and how to talk to your children about it. Information, resources, and conversation guides are available at fbi.gov/sextortion.