New Color-coded Cyber Threats

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Remember when the Democrats and lobby groups ridiculed George W. Bush for using a color coded threat matrix? Carry on….

The White House now has a color-coded scale for cyber-security threat

TheVerge: As the Obama administration nears its final months, the White House has released a framework for handling cyberattacks. The Presidential Policy Directive on United States Cyber Incident Coordination builds on the action plan that Obama laid out earlier this year, and it’s intended to create a clear standard of when and how government agencies will handle incidents. It also comes with a new threat level scale, assigning specific colors and response levels to the danger of a hack.

The cyberattack severity scale is somewhat vague, but it’s supposed to make sure that the agencies involved in cybersecurity — the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence — respond to threats with the same level of urgency and investment. A Level One incident is “unlikely to impact public health or safety, national security, economic security, foreign relations, civil liberties, or public confidence,” while a red Level Four one is “likely to result in a significant impact to public health or safety, national security, economic security, foreign relations, or civil liberties.” One final designation — Level Five, or black — covers anything that “poses an imminent threat to the provision of wide-scale critical infrastructure services, national government stability, or to the lives of US persons.”

The upshot of this is that anything at Level Three or above will trigger a coordination effort to address the threat. In addition to the groups above, this effort will include the company, organization, or agency that was attacked.

Cybersecurity is a growing concern, and both Congress and the White House have spent the past several years pushing various frameworks for shoring it up. This includes a series of hotly debated bills that culminated in the Cyber Information Sharing Act, which has raised privacy questions as it’s been put into practice. At the same time, high-profile hacks have led to serious consequences for companies like Sony Pictures, Target, and Ashley Madison. Most recently, an unknown hacker or hackers — potentially linked to Russia — breached the Democratic National Committee’s servers, releasing large numbers of embarrassing documents and emails. This announcement doesn’t tell us exactly how the federal government will handle future cyberattacks, but along with everything else, it does signal that they’re becoming a more and more standard part of the security equation.

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From the White House FACT SHEET: Presidential Policy Directive

The PPD builds on these lessons and institutionalizes our cyber incident coordination efforts in numerous respects, including:

Establishing clear principles that will govern the Federal government’s activities in cyber incident response;

Differentiating between significant cyber incidents and steady-state incidents and applying the PPD’s guidance primarily to significant incidents;

Categorizing the government’s activities into specific lines of effort and designating a lead agency for each line of effort in the event of a significant cyber incident;

Creating mechanisms to coordinate the Federal government’s response to significant cyber incidents, including a Cyber Unified Coordination Group similar in concept to what is used for incidents with physical effects, and enhanced coordination procedures within individual agencies;

Applying these policies and procedures to incidents where a Federal department or agency is the victim; and,

Ensuring that our cyber response activities are consistent and integrated with broader national preparedness and incident response policies, such as those implemented through Presidential Policy Directive 8-National Preparedness, so that our response to a cyber incident can seamlessly integrate with actions taken to address physical consequences caused by malicious cyber activity.

We also are releasing today a cyber incident severity schema that establishes a common framework within the Federal government for evaluating and assessing the severity of cyber incidents and will help identify significant cyber incidents to which the PPD’s coordination procedures would apply.

Incident Response Principles

The PPD outlines five principles that will guide the Federal government during any cyber incident response:

Shared Responsibility – Individuals, the private sector, and government agencies have a shared vital interest and complementary roles and responsibilities in protecting the Nation from malicious cyber activity and managing cyber incidents and their consequences.

Risk-Based Response – The Federal government will determine its response actions and resource needs based on an assessment of the risks posed to an entity, national security interests, foreign relations, or economy of the United States or to the public confidence, civil liberties, or public health and safety of the American people.

Respecting Affected Entities – Federal government responders will safeguard details of the incident, as well as privacy and civil liberties, and sensitive private sector information.

Unity of Effort – Whichever Federal agency first becomes aware of a cyber incident will rapidly notify other relevant Federal agencies in order to facilitate a unified Federal response and ensure that the right combination of agencies responds to a particular incident.

Enabling Restoration and Recovery – Federal response activities will be conducted in a manner to facilitate restoration and recovery of an entity that has experienced a cyber incident, balancing investigative and national security requirements with the need to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.

Significant Cyber Incidents

While the Federal government will adhere to the five principles in responding to any cyber incident, the PPD’s policies and procedures are aimed at a particular class of cyber incident: significant cyber incidents. A significant cyber incident is one that either singularly or as part of a group of related incidents is likely to result in demonstrable harm to the national security interests, foreign relations, or economy of the United States or to the public confidence, civil liberties, or public health and safety of the American people.

When a cyber incident occurs, determining its potential severity is critical to ensuring the incident receives the appropriate level of attention. No two incidents are the same and, particularly at the initial stages, important information, including the nature of the perpetrator, may be unknown.

Therefore, as part of the process of developing the incident response policy, the Administration also developed a common schema for describing the severity of cyber incidents, which can include credible reporting of a cyber threat, observed malicious cyber activity, or both. The schema establishes a common framework for evaluating and assessing cyber incidents to ensure that all Federal departments and agencies have a common view of the severity of a given incident, the consequent urgency of response efforts, and the need for escalation to senior levels.

The schema describes a cyber incident’s severity from a national perspective, defining six levels, zero through five, in ascending order of severity. Each level describes the incident’s potential to affect public health or safety, national security, economic security, foreign relations, civil liberties, or public confidence. An incident that ranks at a level 3 or above on this schema is considered “significant” and will trigger application of the PPD’s coordination mechanisms.

Lines of Effort and Lead Agencies

To establish accountability and enhance clarity, the PPD organizes Federal response activities into three lines of effort and establishes a Federal lead agency for each:

Threat response activities include the law enforcement and national security investigation of a cyber incident, including collecting evidence, linking related incidents, gathering intelligence, identifying opportunities for threat pursuit and disruption, and providing attribution.   The Department of Justice, acting through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF), will be the Federal lead agency for threat response activities.

Asset response activities include providing technical assets and assistance to mitigate vulnerabilities and reducing the impact of the incident, identifying and assessing the risk posed to other entities and mitigating those risks, and providing guidance on how to leverage Federal resources and capabilities.   The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), acting through the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), will be the Federal lead agency for asset response activities. The PPD directs DHS to coordinate closely with the relevant Sector-Specific Agency, which will depend on what kind of organization is affected by the incident.

Intelligence Support and related activities include intelligence collection in support of investigative activities, and integrated analysis of threat trends and events to build situational awareness and to identify knowledge gaps, as well as the ability to degrade or mitigate adversary threat capabilities. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, through the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, will be the Federal lead agency for intelligence support and related activities.

In addition to these lines of effort, a victim will undertake a wide variety of response activities in order to maintain business or operational continuity in the event of a cyber incident. We recognize that for the victim, these activities may well be the most important. Such efforts can include communications with customers and the workforce; engagement with stakeholders, regulators, or oversight bodies; and recovery and reconstitution efforts.   When a Federal agency is a victim of a significant cyber incident, that agency will be the lead for this fourth line of effort. In the case of a private victim, the Federal government typically will not play a role in this line of effort, but will remain cognizant of the victim’s response activities consistent with these principles and coordinate with the victim.

Coordination Architecture

In order to facilitate the more coordinated, integrated response demanded by significant cyber incidents, the PPD establishes a three-tiered coordination architecture for handling those incidents:

National Policy Level: The PPD institutionalizes the National Security Council-chaired interagency Cyber Response Group (CRG). The CRG will coordinate the development and implementation of United States Government policy and strategy with respect to significant cyber incidents affecting the United States or its interests abroad.

National Operational Level: The PPD directs agencies to take two actions at the national operational level in the event of a significant cyber incident.

Activate enhanced internal coordination procedures. The PPD instructs agencies that regularly participate in the Cyber Response Group to develop these procedures to ensure that they can surge effectively when confronted with an incident that exceeds their day-to-day operational capacity.

Create a Unified Coordination Group. In the event of a significant cyber incident, the PPD provides that the lead agencies for each line of effort, along with relevant Sector-Specific Agencies (SSAs), state, local, tribal and territorial governments, international counterparts, and private sector entities, will form a Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) to coordinate response activities. The Cyber UCG shall coordinate the development, prioritization, and execution of cyber response efforts, facilitate rapid information sharing among UCG members, and coordinate communications with stakeholders, including the victim entity.

Field Level: The PPD directs the lead agencies for each line of effort to coordinate their interaction with each other and with the affected entity.

Integration with Existing Response Policy

The PPD also integrates U.S. cyber incident coordination policy with key aspects of existing Federal preparedness policy to ensure that the Nation will be ready to manage incidents that include both cyber and physical effects, such as a significant power outage resulting from malicious cyber activity. The PPD will be implemented by the Federal government consistent with existing preparedness and response efforts.

Implementation tasks

The PPD also directs several follow-on tasks in order to ensure its full implementation. In particular, it requires that the Administration develop and finalize the National Cyber Incident Response Plan – in coordination with State, Local, Territorial, and Tribal governments, the private sector, and the public – to further detail how the government will manage cyber incidents affecting critical infrastructure. It also directs DHS and DOJ to develop a concept of operations for how a Cyber UCG will operate and for the NSC to update the charter for the CRG.

Refugee Resettlement Agency Courtesy of Clinton/Obama Appointees

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Revolving Door Sends Millions to Refugee Resettlement Agency Run by Former Clinton and Obama Appointees

A revolving door in the Democratic administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has sent millions of dollars in federal funding to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants [USCRI], which is led by two former directors of the Office of Refugee Resettlement [ORR], the federal office that selects the voluntary agencies [VOLAGs] who get lucrative federal contracts to resettle refugees.

Breitbart: President Bill Clinton appointed Lavinia Limon as director of ORR in 1993, a position she held until the end of his administration. After a brief interlude at the Center for New American Communities, a project of the left-leaning National Immigration Forum, Limon was named executive director of USCRI in August 2001, a position she still holds.

In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Eskinder Negash, an Eritrean refugee on Limon’s USCRI staff, as director of ORR. When Negash resigned abruptly in December 2014, he went back to USCRI, where he now serves as Vice President of Global Development.

Revenues at USCRI, his once and future employer, increased significantly while Negash served as director of the ORR. In FY 2006, USCRI revenues were $19 million. By 2015, they had grown to $50 million, more than 90 percent of which came from “government grants.”

ORR’s budget grew from $492 million in FY 2006 to $1.5 billion in 2014.

During his tenure at ORR, Negash’s performance was spotty at best, particularly with regards to his failure to provide Congress with the statutorily required annual reports in a timely manner. As Ann Corcoran wrote at Refugee Resettlement Watch back in 2012, three years after Negash’s arrival:

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program. The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report—so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011. . . (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)

To replace Negash as director of ORR, Obama selected another VOLAG executive, Bob Carey, Vice President of Resettlement and Migration Policy at the International Rescue Committee and “chair of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of NGOs working on issues affecting refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons, victims of trafficking and victims of torture,” the Resettlement Industry’s Lobbying Group.

The twenty members of Refugee Council USA include all of the top VOLAGs whose main source of revenue comes from ORR grants, including Church World Service/Immigration and Refugee Program, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Ethiopian Community Development Council, HIAS, International Catholic Migration Commission, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration & Refugee Services, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and World Relief.

Now the same lobbying group that Carey once chaired, Refugees Council USA, recently announced it wants to more than double the number of refugees allowed in to the United States in 2017—to 200,000, from approximately 70,000 in FY 2015 and an Obama administration “targeted level” of 85,000 in FY 2016, with much of the increase driven by the hasty push to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees this year.

The budget impact of such an increase would be enormous, possibly doubling ORR expenditures from $1.5 billion in FY 2014 to $3 billion or more in FY 2017.

The International Rescue Committee, whose CEO is the former United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Miliband, had worldwide revenues in 2015 of $691 million, a $138 million increase from its $563 million revenues in 2014.

Most of that revenue (82 percent in 2015—or $572 million) came from “grants and contracts,” most from governments and related agencies around the world, including the federal government of the United States.

In contrast to the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, George W. Bush’s two appointed directors of ORR, Nguyen Van Nah and Martha E. Newton, did not participate in the revolving door back to lucrative employment at the VOLAGs they oversaw after they left ORR.

Van Nah, director from 2001 to 2006, became a professor of economics at Sacramento State University in California when he left ORR.

Newton, who succeeded Van Nah, went from ORR to become a consultant at her own firm, Health Strategies LLC.

Democratic appointees Limon, Negash, and Carey have worked tirelessly to expand both the budget of ORR and the party’s far-left, pro-refugee agenda.

It was during Limon’s tenure that the “Wilson Fish alternative program”was used as justification, without the corresponding statutory authority, to hire VOLAGS to operate resettlement programs in states that withdrew from the federal program. The enabling legislation made no mention of such a provision, but Limon and her colleagues pushed it through the HHS regulatory process without much public fanfare.

Currently, several USCRI operations–in Twin Falls, Idaho and Lowell, Massachusetts, for instance–are funded by ORR through this statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program mechanism.

It was also during Limon’s tenure at ORR that the mix of nations of origin for refugees shifted dramatically.

In 1992, the year before Limon was named ORR director, the Near East Asia countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, and the African countries of Angola, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia,Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda —many of them majority Muslim—accounted for only nine percent of all resettled refugees.

But by 2001, Limon’s last year at the helm of ORR, these African and and Near East Asia countries accounted for 46 percent of all resettled refugees.

Operationally, USCRI has had its share of problems under Limon’s leadership.

In 2008, before Negash was named ORR director, USCRI’s Waterbury, Connecticut field office had its resettlement contract there canceled:

The State Department has canceled its contract with the agency responsible for resettling 64 Burmese refugees to Waterbury. In response, Connecticut’s congressional delegation has sent a letter of protest to the state department, asking it to give the International Institute of Connecticut more time to settle its problems.

This follows months of reports of poor housing, fractious relationships with volunteers, missed immunizations for students and insufficient assistance with daily tasks. The State Department brought the refugees here to escape the tyranny in their native Myanmar.

“I’ve heard of agencies being under investigation and there being a threat of canceling a contract, but this is the first time I’ve known about a particular case being canceled,” said Stephanie J. Nawyn, a sociologist at Michigan State University who studies resettlement. “I do think this is unusual.”

In Lowell, Massachusetts last month, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly sexually harassed by a recently arrived Syrian refugee:

A 22-year-old Syrian refugee is behind bars after only two months in the United States after he was accused Thursday night of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl at a state-run swimming pool in Lowell.

In Twin Falls, Idaho, USCRI’s local subcontractor, the College of Southern Idaho, is dealing with a national controversy involving three refugees and the sexual assault of a five-year-old girl.

Chobani Yogurt, the company that owns and operates the largest yogurt manufacturing facility in the world in Twin Falls, thanks in part to $54 million in federal and state grants, relies heavily on refugees brought in by USCRI and the College of Southern Idaho as employees. In 2015, CNN reported that 600 of the company’s 2,000 employees are refugees.

Even the far-left Michelle Goldberg, reporting at Slate, concedes, “There had been an incident involving three boys, ages 7, 10, and 14, and a mentally disabled 5-year-old girl [in Twin Falls].”

[Twin Falls county prosecutor Grant] Loebs described it to me as a “very serious felony.” On June 2, an 89-year-old neighbor discovered the children in the laundry room at the Fawnbrook Apartments, a low-income housing complex. The youngest boy is from Iraq while the older ones, brothers, are from an Eritrean family that passed through Sudanese refugee camps. (Most news reports have identified the older boys as Sudanese.) Only the youngest boy, Loebs said, is alleged to have touched the girl, though investigators suspect the 10-year-old might have as well; the elder boys reportedly made a video.

Because everyone involved in the case is a minor, the records were sealed. Nevertheless, on the evening of June 20, Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury appeared at the weekly City Council meeting to update the anxious public as best he could. He announced that police had arrested the two older boys the previous Friday and that they were being held in juvenile detention. (Loebs later told me that the 7-year-old was also charged with a felony but wasn’t taken into custody because of his age.)

Despite these operational problems, Limon’s hold on the reins of USCRI appears to be secure.

Her job security, as well as her status within the politically powerful refugee resettlement industry, is undoubtedly enhanced by her ties with the Clinton and Obama administrations, which run long and deep.

In 2015, Limon attended an event sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative, where she served on the same panel as Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO of Chobani Yogurt.

Limon appears to have done well from her life time career advancing refugee rights.

A 1972 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, with a degree in sociology, Limon served as director of the International Institute of Los Angeles prior to being picked by Bill Clinton to head up the ORR in 1993.

In 2012, the last year for which such data is readily available, Limon received over $289,000 in compensation for her job as executive director of USCRI.

Peter Limon, who appears to be Limon’s brother, is also employed by USCRI as director of Business Development.

Russia IS in Ukraine and Planning Another Offensive

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Militants preparing offensive at Svitlodarsk bridgehead: Ukraine intelligence Militants are preparing for combat operations in the Donetsk and Slaviansk directions, the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry wrote on Facebook.

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine accuse government soldiers of launching a new offensive near a prized but obliterated airport in the separatists’ de facto capital of Donetsk.

“The intelligence service has detected signs of enemy preparations for combat operations in the Donetsk and Slaviansk directions (Svitlodarsk bridgehead). From August 4 to 8, there is threat of an intensified offensive or raid actions to expand controlled areas,” the report read.

The militants also continue to conduct reconnaissance. In particular, the intelligence service spotted a reconnaissance group of the 9th separate Assault Marine Regiment (Novoazovsk) of the 1st Armed Corps (Donetsk) of the Russian Armed Forces. Sabotage and reconnaissance groups are also scheduled to make an appearance in the following settlements: Maiorsk, Zaitseve, Avdiyivka and Opytne, as well as Pisky, Krasnohorivka and Maryinka. In addition, the intelligence service has reported the arrival of railway cargo from the territory of the Russian Federation to Ilovaisk, comprising two railcars filled with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, six railcars with ammunition, one railcar with medicines and another one with the uniforms. More here.
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Russia has been and is paying special attention to Ukraine. This was the case during tsarist and Soviet times. This is the case now. Consequently, Ukraine has been widely infiltrated by Russian agents, who help their “brotherly neighbors” direct the course of the Ukrainian state into the pro-Russian channel. These agents of influence are not only the Russian mass-media, like the Russian Vesti media conglomerate, the Opposition Bloc Party, the Ukrainian Choice organization (pro-Russian group created by Putin’s crony Viktor Medvedchuk — Ed.), the numerous parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Russian business structures that continue to operate in Ukraine. Russian agents have even infiltrated the structures that display their pro-Ukrainian orientation.

Putin’s “Brusilov Offensive” is based on isolating Ukraine from the West on the one hand and destabilizing Ukraine on the other. He has already accomplished portions of the plan; he may yet accomplish others. But we alone will determine to what extent we will resist this “offensive” and if we have enough endurance and the ability to be guided by cold reason. Read more here.

Given the Debt, Venezuela is out of Money

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

How bad is it? Hey Bernie, Hillary….what say you? Could there be yet another insurgency coming into the United States of refugees?

A new decree issued by the Venezuelan government that forces workers to take agricultural jobs has been denounced as “forced labor” by human rights organizations and unions.

The Nicolás Maduro administration made the controversial regulation public on July 22, saying it was an attempt to curb the country’s widespread shortages of food.

The decree said the Venezuelan government, through the Labor Ministry, can arbitrarily force public and private companies to “lend” them employees for farm work.

In a statement on July 29, Amnesty International called the new system “forced labor.” More here.

Venezuelans carrying groceries cross the Simon Bolivar bridge from Cucuta in Colombia back to San Antonio de Tachira in Venezuela, on July 17, 2016 (AFP Photo/George Castellanos)

Fleeing the country

Bogota (AFP) – Venezuela’s economic crisis has sent a huge but largely ignored wave of people into Colombia, and many more could be on the way, a senior UN refugee official said.

“It’s a silent arrival of a lot of people who are crossing the border and staying illegally on the Colombian side,” said Martin Gottwald, the United Nations Refugee Agency’s representative in Colombia.

No exact figures are available, but the number of Venezuelans fleeing to Colombia is already “quite large,” and Colombia should prepare itself for more, Gottwald told AFP in an interview.

“The avalanche is probably going to increase, with or without the reopening of the border,” he said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro closed the countries’ border in August 2015 after an attack on an army patrol. He blamed right-wing paramilitaries from Colombia.

The leftist leader briefly reopened it last weekend to allow Venezuelans to stock up on food, medicine and other basic supplies amid severe shortages in Venezuela.

Gottwald said a sizeable number of Venezuelans who entered Colombia probably never returned.

Venezuela’s cash could run out ‘within a year’

Venezuela is running out of money and time.

CNN: The country’s central bank only has $11.9 billion in reserves, down sharply from $30 billion in 2011. A few large debt payments are coming due soon. Starting in October, Venezuela owes a total of $4.7 billion in a series of payments.

Venezuela is in the midst of a deep economic, political and humanitarian crisis. Its citizens are suffering from massive food shortages and hospitals lack basic medicine and equipment. Experts say Venezuela has prioritized paying the debt over dealing with the shortages.

“Within a year they’re going to run out of money,” says Russ Dallen, an expert on Venezuela’s debt and managing partner at Caracas Capital, an investing firm in Miami. Dallen pointed out that the country has been almost “suicidal” in its focus on making debt payments.

Related: Venezuela is selling oil for food to Jamaica

Experts’ guesses vary over exactly how much time Venezuela has before it runs out of cash. But all agree that at this rate, Venezuela does not have enough reserves to make all its payments for the next two years.

Much of Venezuela’s reserves are in gold, some of which the country has shipped to Switzerland this year to help repay its debts. As of May, Venezuela had $7.4 billion of its reserves in gold. However, it sent more gold in June, Swiss data shows.

“It doesn’t seem that Venezuela is going to be able to make all payments for next year,” says Mauro Roca, a Latin American economist at Goldman Sachs (GS). “The probability for default is much higher for next year than this year.”

Related: What went wrong in Venezuela

It is a dire situation and ironic for a country that sits on the world’s largest oil reserves. It’s true that oil prices have dropped dramatically and Venezuela hasn’t been able to earn enough money for its oil. But whatever money Venezuela earns from its oil is going to pay down its debts to lenders like China, bondholders, oil drilling companies and importers.

Even oil drilling companies are starting to cut business in Venezuela. For instance, in April, Schlumberger said it would reduce operations in Venezuela due to unpaid bills. It’s also one of the key reasons why the country’s oil production has plunged to 13-year lows.

Related: Why Venezuela’s oil production plunged to a 13-year low

According to Bank of America (BAC), Venezuela’s imports — which include food and medicine — declined between 40% and 45% in the first five months this year compared to the same time a year ago. (There isn’t reliable government data on imports).

“It’s a dramatic cut…they’re making a big effort to pay the debt,” says Sebastian Rondeau, an economist at Bank of America. He estimates that Venezuela can make debt payments until April of next year. “Then the second half of next year is going to be very complicated.”

Related: Venezuela decree ‘amounts to forced labor’

There is still a chance that Venezuela could default this year. Venezuelan officials are currently working with bondholders of the country’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, to exchange short-term debt, which is due in October and November, with longer-term debt. If bondholders don’t agree, it could be a problem.

“It would just kick the can further down the road…we still think the government is highly likely to default over the next two years, if not in the next six months,” says Edward Glossop, an economist at Capital Economics, a research firm.

But China may be coming to Venezuela’s rescue. China is reportedly in talks to give Venezuela a one-year grace period on repaying its debt and only make interest payments. Since 2007, China has loaned Venezuela $65 billion and Venezuela has been slowly repaying that via oil shipments.

Last year, Venezuela shipped 579,000 barrels of oil per day on average to China, an audited financial statement from the country’s oil company shows. It appears China may now cut Venezuela some slack, so it can sell oil to bring in some money.

Regardless of a new debt deal or temporary relief from China, experts say Venezuela’s current path isn’t sustainable.

“It’s like saying how long can you hold your breath under water?” says Dallen.

The Pen and Phone Just Commuted Another 214 Criminals

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Obama Commutes Sentences For 214 Federal Prisoners

President Obama on Wednesday cut short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 life sentences, in what the White House called the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century.

Almost all the prisoners were serving time for nonviolent crimes related to cocaine, methamphetamine or other drugs, although a few were charged with firearms violations related to their drug activities. Almost all are men, though they represent a diverse cross-section of America geographically.

Obama’s push to lessen the burden on nonviolent drug offenders reflects his long-stated view that the U.S. needs to remedy the consequences of decades of onerous sentencing requirements that put tens of thousands behind bars for far too long. Obama has used the aggressive pace of his commutations to increase pressure on Congress to pass a broader fix and to call more attention to the issue.

All told, Obama has commuted 562 sentences during his presidency — more than the past nine presidents combined, the White House said. Almost 200 of those who have benefited were serving life sentences.

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FNC: “We are not done yet,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. “We expect that many more men and women will be given a second chance through the clemency initiative.”

Most of those receiving commutations Wednesday will be released December 1.

Though there’s broad bipartisan support for a criminal justice overhaul, what had looked like a promising legislative opportunity for Obama’s final year has mostly fizzled. As with Obama’s other priorities, the intensely political climate of the presidential election year has confounded efforts by Republicans and Democratic in Congress to find consensus.

Obama has long called for phasing out strict sentences for drug offenses, arguing they lead to excessive punishment and incarceration rates unseen in other developed countries. With Obama’s support, the Justice Department in recent years has directed prosecutors to rein in the use of harsh mandatory minimums.

The Obama administration has also expanded criteria for inmates applying for clemency, prioritizing nonviolent offenders who have behaved well in prison, aren’t closely tied to gangs and would have received shorter sentences if they had been convicted a few years later.

Civil liberties groups praised that policy change but have pushed the Obama administration to grant commutations at a faster pace. The Clemency Resource Center, part of NYU School of Law, said more than 11,000 petitions are pending at the Justice Department and that the group believes 1,500 of them meet the administration’s criteria to be granted.

But the calls for greater clemency have sometimes sparked accusations from Obama’s opponents that he’s too soft on crime, an argument that is particularly resonant this year as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton trade claims about who is best positioned to keep the country safe.

“Many people will use words today like leniency and mercy,” said Kevin Ring of the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “But what really happened is that a group of fellow citizens finally got the punishment they deserved. Not less, but at long last, not more.”