Oil tanker owners stopped sending their ships through the southern Red Sea on Friday after US and UK airstrikes in Yemen, the clearest examples yet of disruption to petroleum flows since Houthi militants began attacking commercial vessels.
At least three firms, who between them marshal more than 350 tankers, said they were pausing voyages through the area. Many more owners are likely to have followed suit after advice from western military forces that all ships should stay away. Dry-bulk commodity and liquefied gas carriers also appeared to avoid the Red Sea.
Borrowing this month far outpaces all of last January
Pent-up need for upgrades drives issuance as finances improve
Hospitals are returning to the municipal-bond market as they aim to pivot from survival to revival.
So far this year, hospitals are tapping the market with more than $1.7 billion to expand and upgrade facilities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg as of Jan. 12. That figure outpaces $390.7 million of issuance by hospitals last January.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took control of a public park in a border city plagued by illegal immigration without warning on Wednesday, its mayor alleged Thursday.
Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas said the state seized Shelby Park, erecting fences to keep out citizens — and even federal border agents — without any notice as part of Abbott’s emergency declaration to combat the migrant crisis.
Shelby Park, which abuts the Rio Grande, has been flooded with migrants crossing into Texas via the dangerous river.
“That is not a decision that we agreed to,” Salinas said in an impassioned speech Thursday. “This is not something that we wanted. This is not something that we asked for as a city.”
Texas Blocks Federal Border Agents From Processing Migrants
After seizing control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas National Guard units deployed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott have prevented Border Patrol agents from entering the area, the federal officials said. Border Patrol has used the park in recent weeks to hold migrants in an outdoor staging area before they are transported for further processing, including last month, when illegal crossings soared to record levels.
Earlier Thursday, Texas state officials prevented Border Patrol boats from patrolling that area, one of the officials added, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
In a filing early Friday with the Supreme Court, the Justice Department described the extraordinary standoff between Texas and the federal government.
“Texas’s new actions,” the Justice Department said, “demonstrate an escalation of the State’s measures to block Border Patrol’s ability to patrol or even to surveil the border and be in a position to respond to emergencies.”
Under federal law, Border Patrol has a legal responsibility to process migrants on U.S. soil and determine whether to detain them, transfer them to another agency, deport them or release them into the country, pending a court hearing. The international boundary between the U.S. and Mexico is located in the middle of the Rio Grande in Texas.
… Border Patrol learned that Texas National Guard members had begun erecting new concertina wire barriers, adding to others along an approximately 2.5-mile stretch of the border at issue in this case. App., infra, 3a. Texas also erected new fencing, located further inland than the original concertina wire. Ibid. That fencing further restricts Border Patrol’s ability to reach the river in particular areas. The relevant stretch includes the area of Shelby Park, which contains the boat ramp from which Border Patrol routinely launches the patrol boats it uses on this stretch of the Rio Grande.
Texas’s new actions since the government’s filing demonstrate an escalation of the State’s measures to block Border Patrol’s ability to patrol or even to surveil the border and be in a position to respond to emergencies. Those actions have also changed the situation on the ground from the account in prior filings in this Court, including Texas’s opposition.
Abbott Statements
“Texas is holding the line at our southern border with miles of additional razor wire and anti-climb barriers to deter and repel the record-high levels of illegal immigration invited by President Biden’s reckless open border policies,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement.
“Texas will continue to deploy Texas National Guard soldiers, DPS troopers, and more barriers, utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to President Biden’s ongoing border crisis.”
A court in Vietnam jailed two former cabinet ministers on Friday and found dozens of officials guilty of bribery and mismanagement for their roles in a coronavirus test kit scandal, the ministry of public security said.
Former Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long was sentenced to 18 years in prison for taking bribes worth $2.25 million, while Chu Ngoc Anh, former science and technology minister, was jailed for three years for mismanagement, the security ministry said in a statement.
At the heart of the scandal was a private medical firm called Viet A Technology Corp, which was accused of colluding with officials to produce coronavirus test kits for the state health system that were sold at inflated prices.
"I was wrong, I am sorry," Long was quoted by Phap Luat Online newspaper as saying at the trial. Reuters could not immediately reach Long's lawyers for comment.
The verdicts comes as Vietnam intensifies its years-long anti-graft campaign that has seen hundreds of senior officials investigated for corruption, with many forced to quit, including former president and premier Nguyen Xuan Phuc and two deputy prime ministers.
Viet A founder and chief executive Phan Quoc Viet was given a 29-year sentence at the week-long trial, in addition to a 25-year term handed down in a separate trial in late December, it added.
Viet A had sold 4.5 million COVID-19 test kits in Vietnam during the pandemic at prices three times higher than their real cost and had illegally generated 1.23 trillion dong ($50.25 million), the ministry said.
The court also handed down sentences ranging from 18 months of probation to 15 years in prison term to 35 others, mostly disease control officials in cities and provinces for their involvement in the scandal, the ministry said.
Two U.S. setbacks this week in the race to the moon with China illustrate the risks of NASA's plans to bet on a new strategy of relying heavily on private companies.
Fresh delays in the U.S. space agency's Artemis moon program and a propulsion issue that doomed American company Astrobotic's recent robot moon lander illustrate the difficulties faced by the only country to have set foot on the moon, as it tightens budgets while carrying on its cosmic legacy.
The United States is planning to put astronauts back on the moon in late 2026 - delayed this week from 2025 - while China is targeting 2030 for its crewed landings. Before humans arrive, each space power plans to first send several smaller robotic missions to examine the moon's surface. China's government-backed program has scored a string of firsts.
Astrobotic's lander carried seven NASA instruments that were meant to inspect the lunar surface. Although the lander won't make it to the surface intact, three other private moon missions sponsored by NASA, including a second Astrobotic attempt, are planned for this year.
NASA is leaning heavily on other companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX - which it will pay for the use of its Starship HLS lunar landing spacecraft - to slash the cost of its moon missions. The last crewed moon trips were the U.S. Apollo missions more than half a century ago, when NASA owned all the spacecraft involved.
"I think that China has a very aggressive plan," NASA chief Bill Nelson said on Tuesday after announcing the Artemis delay. "I think they would like to land before us, because that might give them some PR coup. But the fact is, I don't think they will."
U.S. startups must develop space expertise and culture that took well-funded governments decades to develop. India is also taking that approach - leaning heavily on private companies in its space exploration efforts.
Chinese state media warned on Friday that a report by a prominent U.S. think tank on the military uses of Chinese scientific research across the Indian Ocean gave "ammunition" to countries bent on concocting threats from China.
The report this week by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) "comes at a time when some countries need to manufacture a 'China threat' narrative in the Indian Ocean region and provides them with ammunition", the state-controlled tabloid Global Times said in an editorial.
"The timing of this report is delicate," given that the Maldives and China are upgrading ties after the election of President Mohamed Muizzu, while Sri Lanka recently suspended foreign research vessels, including from China, from visiting its ports.
The CSIS study traced data over four years of deployments by nominally Chinese civilian oceanographic and energy research ships, concluding that the work would in part serve the Chinese navy's needs to project power into the region.
Detailed knowledge of ocean depths, currents and temperature was vital to China's growing submarine operations, the study said.
"While scientific and commercial benefits may accrue from Chinese oceanographic research, these activities may also prove crucial for the (People's Liberation Army) in expanding its operational reach and capabilities in the Indian Ocean," it said.
"This expansion poses a significant challenge to key regional players like India, as well as to the United States and its allies."
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China's marine scientific research fully complied with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"We hope that the relevant parties will take an objective view of China's marine scientific research activities and refrain from speculating through coloured glasses," Mao said.
The Chinese defence ministry did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment.
Reuters last month outlined extensive Chinese military vulnerabilities across the Indian Ocean, where the its navy lacks a hard base network and air cover despite its reliance on oil shipments through the region.
The Global Times defended ongoing research missions, saying China and regional partners were exploring the natural ecology of the region "without any hidden agenda".
"The Indian Ocean is one of the least understood oceans by the scientific community, and a fundamental reason is the lack of sufficient on-site observations."
BlackRock Inc. agreed to buy Adebayo Ogunlesi’s Global Infrastructure Partners for about $12.5 billion, vaulting the world’s biggest money manager into the top ranks of investors that make long-term bets on energy, transportation and digital infrastructure.
BlackRock will pay $3 billion of cash and about 12 million shares, worth about $9.5 billion at Thursday’s close, and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter. Ogunlesi, a former Credit Suisse executive who’s GIP’s chairman and chief executive officer, will join BlackRock’s board and global executive committee.
The acquisition of GIP, which manages $100 billion, is the biggest deal in more than a decade for BlackRock and a major step by CEO Larry Fink to transform the firm into a key player in the rapidly growing market for private and alternative assets.
“The unprecedented need for new infrastructure – for digital infrastructure, for upgraded logistics hubs, and for decarbonization and energy security – coupled with record high government deficits means that private capital will be needed like never before,” Fink and BlackRock President Rob Kapito said in a memo to employees. “This will be one of the fastest-growing areas of our industry over the next 10 years.”
The deal, announced in a statement Friday along with a significant management shuffle, was the firm’s largest acquisition since its 2009 purchase of Barclays Global Investors, putting the asset manager on a path to becoming the biggest provider of exchange-traded funds. The GIP agreement came as the firm posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings with inflows pushing its total client assets back above $10 trillion for the first time in two years.
