Interim Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez has passed a new law opening the country’s oil production to privatisation. For the first time in nearly 30 years…
The US eased sanctions at the same time. American firms can now sell, buy, refine, and transport crude. Sanctions on production persist for now. So ends the PDVSA nightmare…
Venezuelan oil is of poor quality and the sector has been decimated to such an extent that it will take a huge amount of investment to get it back on its feet. Expansive new legislation is intended to wrestle control of the sector from the state and allow for independent legal dispute arbitration – so the courts can’t expropriate assets again. Rubio added this week that China will still be able to buy Venezuelan oil – but only at market prices…
Rubio added that he wants opposition leader María Corina Machado to be part of a transition process and run for elections eventually. The long road to liberal democracy…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”