January 5, 2018

Ecuador's Correa returns to fight referendum campaign

Source: AFP

Ex-president Rafael Correa returned to Ecuador from Belgium on Friday to lead the campaign against a referendum called by the government effectively to prevent his re-election.

Videos posted on Twitter showed an ebullient Correa addressing cheering supporters from atop an open truck at the head of a cavalcade of vehicles shortly after his arrival in the southwestern port city of Guayaquil.

Correa is locked in a battle with his successor Lenin Moreno for control of their deeply divided leftist ruling Country Alliance party.

"They said he would not come back. They said he was afraid to return. The New History of Ecuador begins here. Here are the real people. Your people!" posted lawmaker Carlos Viteri, who accompanied Correa.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/ecuadors-correa-returns-fight-referendum-campaign-175719717.html

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Correa can't let go.

After Moreno gets blamed for the deficits created by the decline in oil revenues, Rafael will run for President in the next election cycle. Just as planned.

January 5, 2018

More than half of Norway's new cars electrified: data

Electric or hybrid vehicles accounted for more than half of all new cars sold in Norway last year, official data showed on Wednesday, confirming the country's pioneering role in carbon-free transport.

Zero-emission, mainly all-electric as well as a few hydrogen-powered cars, accounted for 20.9 percent of total sales in 2017, while hybrid vehicles accounted for 31.3 percent, including 18.4 percent for plug-in hybrids, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) calculated.

This represents an increase over the previous year, when zero-emission and hybrid cars accounted for 15.7 percent and 24.5 percent respectively of total sales, making Norway a world leader in electrifying road transport.

Norway, the biggest producer of oil in western Europe, has set itself the ambitious goal of selling only new zero-emission cars starting from 2025.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-half-norways-cars-electric-data-112202573.html

January 2, 2018

Paul Ryan Says He Will Retire Once He Has Wrecked Country

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Starting 2018 with a political bombshell, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that he will retire once he is satisfied that he has completely wrecked the country.

“I came to Washington with the goal of destroying life in the United States as we know it,” Ryan said in an emotional press conference. “Once I look around me and see nothing but smoldering ruins, I’ll call it a day.”

Asked by a reporter whether, by passing the Republican tax bill, he had not in fact already wrecked the country, the House Speaker responded, “That was an important step in the right direction, but, make no mistake, there is much havoc left to wreak.”

“There’s a lot of talk about the millions of people who will lose their health care, but no one one talks about the tens of millions who still have it,” he said. “That just shows how much work I still have to do.”

Speaking solemnly about the challenging path of destruction that lies ahead of him, Ryan said, “I have many lives to wreck before I sleep.”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/paul-ryan-says-he-will-retire-once-he-has-wrecked-country

January 1, 2018

Photos: Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster prepped for one-way trip to deep space

SpaceX has released photos of Elon Musk’s midnight cherry red Tesla Roadster, the dummy payload selected for the Falcon Heavy rocket’s maiden test flight, being readied for launch at Cape Canaveral.

The electric sports car will be launched on a trajectory to escape the grasp of Earth’s gravity aboard the first flight of SpaceX’s new heavy-lifter, a test launch currently scheduled for some time next month from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, announced in early December that his Tesla Roadster will be aboard the Falcon Heavy, bound for a heliocentric solar orbit that should take it was far as Mars’ distance from the sun.

The repurposed car “will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent,” he wrote on Twitter.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/12/28/photos-elon-musks-tesla-roadster-prepped-for-one-way-trip-to-deep-space/

January 1, 2018

As U.S. budget fight looms, Republicans flip their fiscal script

The head of a conservative Republican faction in the U.S. Congress, who voted this month for a huge expansion of the national debt to pay for tax cuts, called himself a "fiscal conservative" on Sunday and urged budget restraint in 2018.

In keeping with a sharp pivot under way among Republicans, U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," drew a hard line on federal spending, which lawmakers are bracing to do battle over in January.

When they return from the holidays on Wednesday, lawmakers will begin trying to pass a federal budget in a fight likely to be linked to other issues, such as immigration policy, even as the November congressional election campaigns approach in which Republicans will seek to keep control of Congress.

President Donald Trump and his Republicans want a big budget increase in military spending, while Democrats also want proportional increases for non-defense "discretionary" spending on programs that support education, scientific research, infrastructure, public health and environmental protection.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-budget-fight-looms-republicans-flip-fiscal-script-205657527--business.html