Airlines canceled more flights leaving the Indonesian island of Bali on Saturday, citing forecasts of deteriorating flying conditions because of a risk of volcanic ash from the erupting Mount Agung volcano.

A Bali airport spokesman said the airport was operating normally, but airlines such as Jetstar and Virgin Australia had opted to cancel some flights.

“Bali flying conditions expected to be clear throughout the day, but forecast for tonight has deteriorated so several flights have been canceled,” Australian budget airline Jetstar said on its Twitter account Saturday.

Thousands stranded

The erupting volcano had closed the airport for much of this week, stranding thousands of visitors from Australia, China and other countries, before the winds changed and flights resumed. 

Twenty flights were canceled Friday evening because of concerns over ash. Some airlines, including Malaysia’s AirAsia, have said they would only operate out of Bali during the day, because the ash could impair visibility at night and wind conditions in the area were unpredictable.

Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash because it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure.

There are also concerns over changing weather conditions with a tropical cyclone south of Java island affecting weather and wind in the area, including for Bali, the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics agency said.

Consulates offer aid

Several foreign consulates have set up booths in the international departures area to assist stranded passengers.

Subrata Sarkar, India’s vice consul in Bali, told Reuters at the airport’s international departure area that they had helped around 500 passengers so far this week.

“We have advised citizens the volcano may erupt. We never say ‘please don’t come.’ But we have issued travel advisories. If it’s urgent business, then OK, but if it’s only tourism, then plans should be reconsidered,” Sarkar said.
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President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that it won’t require mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution, despite an industry legacy of abandoned mines that have fouled waterways across the U.S.

The move came after mining groups and Western-state Republicans pushed back against a proposal under former President Barack Obama to make companies set aside money for future cleanup costs.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said modern mining practices and state and federal rules already in place adequately address the risks from mines that are still operating.

Requiring more from mining companies was unnecessary, Pruitt said, and “would impose an undue burden on this important sector of the American economy and rural America, where most of these jobs are based.”

The U.S. mining industry has a long history of abandoning contaminated sites and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups. Thousands of shuttered mines leak contaminated water into rivers, streams and other waterways, including hundreds of cases in which the EPA has intervened, sometimes at huge expense.

The EPA spent $1.1 billion on cleanup work at abandoned hard-rock mining and processing sites across the U.S. from 2010 to 2014.

Since 1980, at least 52 mines and mine processing sites using modern techniques had spills or other releases of pollution, according to documents released by the EPA last year.

In 2015, an EPA cleanup team accidentally triggered a 3-million gallon spill of contaminated water from Colorado’s inactive Gold King mine, tainting rivers in three states with heavy metals including arsenic and lead.

The Obama-era rule was issued last December under court order after environmental groups sued the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law.

“It’s galling to see the Trump administration side with industry polluters over the America taxpayer,” said Bonnie Gestring with Earthworks, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

“We’ll see them back in court,” she added.

The proposal applied to hard-rock mining, which includes precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. Coal mines already were required to provide assurances that they’ll pay for cleanups under a 1977 federal law

Hard-rock mining companies would have faced a combined $7.1 billion financial obligation under the dropped rule, costing them up to $171 million annually to set aside sufficient funds to pay for future cleanups, according to an EPA analysis.

The mining industry and members of Congress from Western states welcomed Friday’s announcement.

National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said the Obama proposal resulted from environmentalists using litigation to force the government into what he said was an unnecessary rule.

“Today’s action shows that reason can prevail,” Quinn said.

Hard-rock mines in the U.S. produced about $26.6 billion worth of metals in 2015, according to the association. Of those mines, the EPA had said 221 would be subject to the dropped rule.
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Republicans pushed a nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill through the Senate early Saturday after burst of eleventh-hour horse trading, as a party starved all year for a major legislative triumph took a giant step toward giving President Donald Trump one of his top priorities by Christmas.

“Big bills are rarely popular. You remember how unpopular Obamacare was when it passed?” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an interview, shrugging off polls showing scant public enthusiasm for the measure. He said the legislation would prove to be “just what the country needs to get growing again.”

Trump hailed the bill’s passage on Twitter, thanking McConnell and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas!” the president wrote.

Senate approval came on a 51-49 roll call with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the only lawmaker to cross party lines. The measure focuses its tax reductions on businesses and higher-earning individuals, gives more modest breaks to others and offers the boldest rewrite of the nation’s tax system since 1986.

​Corker balks at debt increase

Republicans touted the package as one that would benefit people of all incomes and ignite the economy. Even an official projection of a $1 trillion, 10-year flood of deeper budget deficits couldn’t dissuade GOP senators from rallying behind the bill.

“Obviously I’m kind of a dinosaur on the fiscal issues,” said Corker, who battled to keep the bill from worsening the government’s accumulated $20 trillion in IOUs.

The Republican-led House approved a similar bill last month in what has been a stunningly swift trip through Congress for complex legislation that impacts the breadth of American society. The two chambers will now try crafting a compromise to send Trump.

After spending the year’s first nine months futilely trying to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, GOP leaders were determined to move the measure rapidly before opposition Democrats and lobbying groups could blow it up. The party views passage as crucial to retaining its House and Senate majorities in next year’s elections.

​Democrats deride gift to wealthy

Democrats derided the bill as a GOP gift to its wealthy and business backers at the expense of lower-earning people. They contrasted the bill’s permanent reduction in corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 20 percent to smaller individual tax breaks that would end in 2026.

Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has said the bill’s reductions for many families would be modest and said by 2027, families earning under $75,000 would on average face higher, not lower, taxes.

The bill is “removed from the reality of what the American people need,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. He criticized Republicans for releasing a revised, 479-page bill that no one can absorb shortly before the final vote, saying, “The Senate is descending to a new low of chicanery.”

“You really don’t read this kind of legislation,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told home-state reporters, asked why the Senate was approving a bill some senators hadn’t read. He said lawmakers needed to study it and get feedback from affected groups.

Democrats took to the Senate floor and social media to mock one page that included changes scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Later, they won enough GOP support to kill a provision by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., that would have bestowed a tax break on conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan.

​Tax panel: $1 trillion added to debt

The bill hit rough waters after the Joint Taxation panel concluded it would worsen federal shortfalls by $1 trillion over a decade, even when factoring in economic growth that lower taxes would stimulate. Trump administration officials and many Republicans have insisted the bill would pay for itself by stimulating the economy. But the sour projections stiffened resistance from some deficit-averse Republicans.

But after bargaining that stretched into Friday, GOP leaders nailed down the support they needed in a chamber they control 52-48. Facing unyielding Democratic opposition, Republicans could lose no more than two GOP senators and prevail with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence, but ended up not needing it.

Leaders’ changes included helping millions of companies whose owners pay individual, not corporate, taxes on their profits by allowing deductions of 23 percent, up from 17.4 percent. That helped win over Wisconsin’s Johnson and Steve Daines of Montana.

People would be allowed to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, a demand of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. That matched a House provision that chamber’s leaders included to keep some GOP votes from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California.

The changes added nearly $300 billion to the tax bill’s costs. To pay for that, leaders reduced the number of high-earners who must pay the alternative minimum tax, rather than completely erasing it. They also increased a one-time tax on profits U.S.-based corporations are holding overseas and would require firms to keep paying the business version of the alternative minimum tax.

Deal on DACA?

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who like Corker had been a holdout and has sharply attacked Trump’s capabilities as president, voted for the bill. He said he’d received commitments from party leaders and the administration “to work with me” to restore protections, dismantled by Trump, for young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children. That seemed short of a pledge to actually revive the safeguards.

The Senate bill would drop the highest personal income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 38.5 percent. The estate tax levied on a few thousand of the nation’s largest inheritances would be narrowed to affect even fewer.

Deductions for state and local income taxes, moving expenses and other items would vanish, the standard deduction, used by most Americans, would nearly double to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples, and the per-child tax credit would grow.

The bill would abolish the “Obamacare” requirement that most people buy health coverage or face tax penalties. Industry experts say that would weaken the law by easing pressure on healthier people to buy coverage, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the move would push premiums higher and leave 13 million additional people uninsured.

Drilling would be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Another provision, knocked out because it violated Senate budget rules, would have explicitly let parents buy tax-advantaged 529 college savings accounts for fetuses, a step they can already take but which anti-abortion forces wanted to inscribe into law. There were also breaks for the wine, beer and spirits industries, Alaska Natives and aircraft management firms.
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Venezuela has arrested Diego Salazar, a relative of former oil czar Rafael Ramirez, as part of an investigation into a money laundering scandal in Andorra, the South American country’s state prosecutor said on Friday night.

President Nicolas Maduro is overseeing what his administration calls a “crusade” against corruption in the member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Some 65 oil executives have been detained in a deepening purge that could also see the leftist leader consolidate his grip over the energy sector and sideline rivals.

The Salazar case appears to relate to what the United States in 2015 said were some $2 billion in laundered funds from Venezuelan state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., known as PDVSA, at the private bank Banca Privada D’Andorra (BPA).

Saab did not specify Salazar’s role or details on the money laundering, except that it involved around 1.35 billion euros in 2011 and 2012, but he said the case was bound to grow.

“I want to highlight that this citizen will likely not be the only one detained and the only one investigated,” Saab said in a phone call to state television announcing the arrest.

The arrest is bound to cast the spotlight on Ramirez, who was the powerful head of PDVSA and the oil ministry for a decade before Maduro demoted him as a envoy to the United Nations in 2014.

A protracted rivalry between Maduro and Ramirez has increased in the recent weeks, sources close to the situation said this week, especially after Ramirez wrote online opinion articles criticizing PDVSA’s production slump and the government’s handling of Venezuela’s crisis-hit economy.

Maduro sacked Ramirez, who was thought to have presidential ambitions, from his job this week and summoned him back to Caracas from New York, the people with knowledge of the situation said.

Ramirez and PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Salazar could not immediately be reached for comment.
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A Peruvian prosecutor asked a judge to jail executives of three local construction companies that had previously partnered with  Brazilian builder Odebrecht, which has admitted to paying bribes in the country, chief prosecutor Pablo Sanchez said on Friday.

Prosecutors started investigating the five executives of Grana y Montero, JJC Contratistas Generales and Ingenieros Civiles y Contratistas Generales (ICCGSA) earlier this week. The five are accused of paying bribes to win a highway construction contract in southern Peru along with Odebrecht.

Peru has aggressively investigated bribery allegations linked to scandal-plagued Odebrecht and former President Ollanta Humala was jailed earlier this year following accusations he took illegal campaign donations from the firm.

Prosecutor Hamilton Castro made the jail request this morning, Sanchez told reporters at a business conference in Paracas, south of Lima.

ICCGSA said in a statement none of its shareholders or employees had knowledge of the alleged acts of corruption and said it was willing to collaborate with investigators. Grana y Montero and JJC Contratistas Generales did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Last month, prosecutors said they were investigating Grana for alleged involvement in bribes that Odebrecht has admitted paying to local officials in exchange for lucrative contracts.

Grana’s shares in Lima have fallen more than 60 percent this year on concerns over the probe. Shares were down 5.6 percent at 1.84 soles  ($0.5690) per share on Friday afternoon.

The company has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said an internal probe turned up no evidence that its employees knew about or took part in the bribes. It has said it is willing to cooperate with the investigation.

($1 = 3.2337 soles)
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Venezuela’s socialist government and its opposition sought Friday to jumpstart negotiations on resolving the country’s economic and political crisis, pressured by international sanctions and a looming presidential election.

The planned two-day meetings in the Dominican Republic are the first formal talks since anti-government protests collapsed in July with a toll of more than 120 dead and thousands detained. Given the scant results of previous attempts at dialogue, including talks last year mediated by the Vatican, expectations are low.

But some analysts expressed optimism a deal could be struck because the cash-strapped administration of President Nicolas Maduro is desperately looking for support as it tries to refinance Venezuela’s huge foreign debt. That will give the opposition a foothold to press their demands, analysts said.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the stars align like we have at this moment,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Just the fact that the two sides agreed to talk is a sign of progress.

Still smarting from their belief the government committed fraud to pull off an unexpected victory in recent gubernatorial elections, several opposition parties are boycotting the talks as well as this month’s mayoral elections. They say such things legitimize Maduro’s “dictatorship.”

The hardliners have won a sympathetic ear from international critics, including Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, who this week said that “if I were Venezuelan, I wouldn’t go to the dialogue.”

Reflecting those tensions, the opposition delegation led by National Assembly President Julio Borges for the first time included representatives from civil society groups. He said that would add transparency to the closed-door talks.

Borges said the opposition is repeating longstanding demands that the government release dozens of political prisoners, recognize the National Assembly’s authority and allow humanitarian aid. And the opposition will push for guarantees that next year’s presidential election will be free and fair, he said.

“We come today determined to fight for basic rights, such as the right to vote, the right to democracy,” Borges said upon arriving, adding that they could also take to the streets and rally international pressure.

“We hope to defend the rights that have been taken from Venezuelans,” he said.

Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez, who led the government delegation, said the current leadership is capable of enforcing fair elections, despite charges by critics.

“In this negotiation process, yes, we will listen to what the opposition has to say” Rodriguez said. “But we will forcefully demand an immediate stop to the economic aggressions against Venezuela.”

Lending urgency to the talks is Venezuela’s spiraling financial crisis. Despite holding the world’s largest oil reserves, the OPEC nation has been battered by the fall in crude prices and by a slide in production. The resulting cash crunch has aggravated economic problems that have Venezuelans struggling with skyrocketing inflation and shortages of food and medicine.

Financial sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in retaliation for Venezuela’s alleged human rights violations threaten to exacerbate the pain.

U.S. investors are banned from providing fresh capital to Venezuela, making it virtually impossible for Maduro to renegotiate billions in foreign debt.

The U.S. Treasury Department, however, has said that sanctions could ease if any debt restructuring deal was endorsed by Venezuela’s legislature, whose authority has been gutted by a pro-government assembly formed to rewrite the constitution.

Also providing an extra nudge will be the presence as observers of foreign ministers from a several Latin American countries, including two of Maduro’s staunchest leftist allies, Bolivia and Nicaragua, and two harsh critics, Mexico and Chile.

Luis Vicente Leon, president of the polling firm Datanalisis, said Venezuela’s economic crisis is pressuring Maduro in a way not seen in nearly two decades of socialist rule that began with the late President Hugo Chavez.

“I think that the chances of successful negotiation are limited more to the economic sector than the political one,” he said. “However, the government will have to make some political concessions to lower the economic tension.”

 Associated Press writer Tatiana Fernandez reported this story in Santo Domingo. AP writers Scott Smith and Jorge Rueda contributed from Caracas, Venezuela.
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Senate Republicans delayed a final vote on an overhaul of the U.S. tax code late Thursday amid furious, behind-the-scenes efforts to fine-tune the legislation to satisfy a small group of fiscal hawks whose support is needed to pass one of President Donald Trump’s core campaign promises.

“Senators will continue to debate the bill tonight,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said, adding that further votes pertaining to the tax bill would occur later Friday.

Only hours earlier, Republicans appeared poised to pass a massive restructuring of federal taxes and deal a stinging defeat to Democrats. Several wavering Republicans had signaled support for the bill, including John McCain of Arizona.

Late in the day, however, three Republicans, led by Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, clung to a demand that proposed tax cuts would be pared back if future U.S. economic performance did not meet projections.

Republicans have a two-seat Senate majority. Three defections from their ranks would torpedo the bill, given unified Democratic opposition.

With time needed to rewrite portions of the bill to satisfy the Corker contingent, Republican leaders opted to postpone further votes.

Details of plan

The underlying proposal would permanently cut corporate taxes, temporarily cut taxes on wages and salaries, boost some tax deductions Americans can claim while eliminating others, and increase the U.S. national debt, which currently is more than $20 trillion.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation issued a report Thursday estimating the Republican plan would sap federal coffers by more than $1 trillion over a decade, even taking into account more than $400 billion in new revenue generated by a projected increase in economic activity.

“The [JCT] score ends the fantasy about magical growth, about unicorns and growth fairies showing that tax cuts pay for themselves,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said.

Republicans insisted a vibrant economy was necessary for fiscal health, and that tax cuts would promote growth.

“If this legislation is signed into law, we are going to have a smaller deficit in future years than we are on the path to have now,” Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said. “The right incentives lead to stronger growth.”

Democrats shot back that the federal deficit and income inequality both expanded after every tax cut enacted in recent decades.

“Trickle-down economics did not work under Ronald Reagan, did not work under George W. Bush,” independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats, said. “It is a fraudulent theory.”

“All we are doing is shifting the tax to our kids,” Maine Senator Angus King, another independent who also caucuses with Democrats, said. “If 5-year-olds knew what we were doing and could vote, none of us would have a job.”

Corporate tax rate

The tax plan would cut corporate taxes from a maximum rate of 35 percent to 20 percent.

“Other countries have learned how to use their tax codes to entice U.S. businesses overseas, businesses around the globe, to their country — to move away from the United States to their countries’ more competitive tax code,” Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said. “That disparity between the U.S. tax code and foreign tax rates has literally chased jobs and wages out of this country.”

Some Democrats agreed that U.S. corporate taxes should be lowered, but insisted the Republican plan goes too far and would eventually trigger painful cuts to federal programs that benefit the poor and elderly in the future.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey accused Republicans of mounting a “con game” in which they tout tax breaks but gloss over “their brutal, vicious cuts to programs for the poorest, the sickest, the elderly, neediest in our country.”

In a sign that Republicans were confident of passing the bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan laid the groundwork for creating a bicameral committee to reconcile differences between the Senate’s legislation and a House version that was approved several weeks ago.

A unified tax plan would have to pass both chambers before it could go to the White House for Trump’s signature.
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Venezuela’s Avior Airlines has been banned from European Union skies after a commission determined it no longer meets international safety standards, another blow to troubled nation’s already beleaguered flight industry.

The European Commission announced Thursday that Avior had been added to a list of international airlines prohibited from flying within the union because the European Aviation Safety Agency detected “unaddressed safety deficiencies.”

No further details were provided.

The Venezuelan airline is one of a handful still offering international flight destinations as major carriers like United and Delta halt operations in the crisis-ridden nation. Air carriers have cited financial and safety concerns as reasons for suspending service.

An Avior flight made an emergency landing in Ecuador earlier this month after passengers described seeing fire and smelling smoke. Videos posted on social media showed nervous passengers wearing deployed oxygen masks.

“We thought it was our final moments,” one passenger said.

Avior operates flights within Venezuela, throughout Latin America and to Miami, Florida, and lists an office location in Madrid on its website.

The airline is certified under U.S. federal aviation regulations and Venezuela remains in good standing with the International Aviation Safety Assessment, the Federal Aviation Administration’s program to determine whether foreign countries provide sufficient safety and oversight of airlines that fly to the U.S.

Venezuela has grown increasingly isolated as an expanding list of airlines cancel service amid low customer demand and financial distress. The head of the International Air Transport Association has said that Venezuela owes $3.8 billion to several international airlines, a debt it is unexpected to repay anytime soon. The government defaulted on billions of dollars’ worth of bonds earlier this month.

The last United Airlines flight departed Caracas in late June, with crewmembers waving a Venezuelan flag out of the pilot’s window. American Airlines, Air France and Iberia are among the large international carriers that still offer service to the South American nation.
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The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has finally ended

In all, 17 named storms swept across the Atlantic this year and 10 rose to hurricane status. But the season will be remembered for the deadly trio — Harvey, Irma and Maria — that brought death and destruction to Caribbean nations and the southern U.S.

This was the first year on record in which the continental United States was hit by two Category 4 hurricanes, Harvey and Irma.

Harvey made landfall in South Texas on August 25, leading to days of downpours that dumped an unprecedented 152 centimeters (60 inches) of rain. It was the greatest rainfall amount recorded from a single storm in U.S. history.

Harvey also damaged or destroyed about 200,000 homes as the storm system flooded much of Houston and smaller coastal communities.

Then, on September 11 came Irma — the strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, outside the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. With maximum winds of nearly 300 kilometers an hour, Irma destroyed the Caribbean island of Barbuda, shredded vast sections of the Virgin Islands and knocked out power in much of Florida.

September also saw the arrival of Hurricanes Jose, Katia and Lee, before Category 4 Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on September 20.

It was the U.S. territory’s strongest hurricane landfall since 1928. With sustained winds of 250 kilometers per hour, Maria knocked out power across the island, causing the biggest blackout in U.S. history. The island is still struggling to restore power as millions remain without electricity two months later.

Bloomberg News reports the 2017 hurricane season was the most expensive on record, with an estimated $202.6 billion in damage. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to release the official damage tally early next year.
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