Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday lashed out at U.S. licenses barring companies doing business with sanctioned Venezuelan state firms from paying cash to his administration.

Washington last year authorized U.S. and European firms to resume taking Venezuelan crude oil on the condition no funds be paid to Venezuela. Last week, the United States authorized Trinidad & Tobago to import gas from a Venezuelan offshore field and barred cash from changing hands.

The permits were part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s move to encourage political talks between Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition with the main goal of securing a fair presidential election.

“They tell a country it has permission to negotiate with Venezuela, but it cannot pay in dollars or any form of cash. It must pay with food or products,” Maduro said in a broadcast. “That is colonialism.”

Maduro criticized the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which issued the licenses, and said it tries to dictate how to do business with Venezuela to state and private companies.

“It is a joke to sovereign countries. I call sovereign countries and governments in America and the Caribbean to denounce this colonial model. We do not accept it, we will go on our way,” he said.

Maduro did not elaborate on any coming actions.

Following the license to Trinidad last week, Venezuela has not said publicly if it will negotiate with the Caribbean country.

(NewsNation) — What was once an easy side hustle is getting more dangerous by the mile.

Violent rideshare robberies are becoming a growing trend around our country as criminals order a Lyft or Uber then rob, beat — and in some cases, kill the driver.

Law enforcement says the brazen crimes have accelerated in some cases because of social media and the FBI tells NewsNation that there are multiple factors fueling this.

In the past months, federal and local authorities have issued warnings on the dangers rideshare drivers can face. In some instances attacks have been violent and even fatal.

The beatings, strangling and even biting are being captured at an alarming rate on rideshare dashcams.

Recent carjackings have been deliberate with some criminals creating fake profiles to lure drivers in and then attack them, either robbing them or, worse, killing them to make off with their cars.

NewsNation spoke exclusively with one rideshare driver in Houston who refused to give up his car. The encounter was caught on a dash cam. The criminals were just teenagers and put a gun to the driver’s head before he fought back.

“One of them tried to grab my phone, the other put a gun to my head,” the driver said. “When I refused to give them my phone, they tried to pull me out. I pushed the gas pedal and started driving off.”

NewsNation tracked down that driver. He says while he’s currently a specialist in the U.S. Army Reserves, it was pure instinct, not weapons training on display that afternoon inside his Camry.

“I just kept driving,” he said. “Then lucky for me he does decide to get out from the car. He just jumped out of a moving car.”

After a carjacking in Florida rideshare criminals quickly turn on responding deputies.

A Volusia County canine was shot in the face. A second canine was shot too before the passenger-turned-suspect was taken down.

Police do not advise fighting back as not everyone has had luck on their side. A rideshare driver was killed while trying to save up money for veterinary school in central Illinois. Another driver in Charlotte, North Carolina, was shot multiple times, and then forced to continue driving.

“Every time I close my eyes I still hear the gunshots because even if I don’t react or show it, I was…I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life,” the driver said of the incident haunting him.

Liz Hilton of Missouri knows the danger drivers face all too well. She convinced Elijah Newman, her friend of 20 years, to move his rideshare gig to her hometown of St. Louis. In just three weeks, he was dead.

“It’s like I put him on a death sentence,” Hilton said. “I mean, there’s really no other way grounded. I wish I could have told him more.”

Newman, a father of five from Ghana, was killed on the same road a carjacking went unsolved just weeks before.

“It’s steadily escalating,” the FBI agent told NewsNation.

He is just one of the special agents nationwide working on these violent robberies, but stealing a vehicle he says isn’t the only motive at work here.

“It is also getting fueled through social media,” he said. “Some people are creating challenges.”

A NewsNation investigation discovered the suspects in these cases are young.

The majority are in their teens like the 16 and 17-year-olds charged with murdering a Lyft driver saving for veterinary school in Urbana, Illinois.

A juvenile was among those under arrest in the shooting of Uber driver Anthony Facey in January in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Yelling over me while I’m talking to dispatch,” Facey said. “No, no, no, nothing’s wrong with him. He just got grazed you don’t have to send anybody.”

The FBI has put out a warning to drivers alerting that criminals are using fake profiles and drivers should verify in screen riders.

Driver safety has been on the radar at Uber and Lyft for years.

Just this fall Uber tested a feature in three U.S. cities that will record video and audio on every trip. For privacy, however, it’s only viewable if the driver uploads it.

Lyft tells NewsNation they are continuously investing in new features and policies to help protect drivers and are committed to working with law enforcement to prevent these incidents for I’m happening.

For many, like the U.S. Army Reservist in Houston, who’s saw a teenager arrested in his case, the inherently dangerous job will continue after the like few days.

“After the like few days,” he said. “I started driving again.”

He’ll do so with this urgent warning, while the vehicle is the livelihood, the life of the driver is paramount.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and other company execs presented figures Thursday that showed a slowdown at AWS.

Associated Press

• Amazon’s cloud business is seeing a slowdown in growth as customers reduce spending. 
• Amazon’s execs say AWS growth will decline even further this quarter.
• Customers are optimizing spending as they look to reduce costs amid the economic downturn.

The growth of Amazon’s cloud business was shaved in half as companies confronting an economic slowdown look to cut costs.

In other words, a bank that has fewer deals to make needs less computing power; same with an advertising agency that has fewer ads to place. All of that translates into less spend at Amazon Web Services, or AWS — Amazon’s cash cow that brought in revenues of $21.4 billion last quarter. 

AWS still logged 20% growth compared to the same period a year ago, but that’s down sharply from the same quarter in 2021, when AWS logged 40% growth.

The decelerating numbers come as Amazon as a whole reported its slowest year of growth in the time it’s been a public company.

Meanwhile, AWS’s growth is expected to continue to slow even further in the quarters ahead, Amazon CFO Brian T. Olsavsky said on a call with Wall Street analysts. He said trying economic times would continue to be a “headwind,” saying AWS’s growth could notch down even further into the mid-teens.

It’s not entirely surprising. Analysts were expecting a slowdown in growth after Microsoft also reported slowing cloud growth last week. Analysts lowered their expectations after that, but AWS numbers missed even those dimmed expectations. 

As corporate customers look to save money in an economic downturn, they want to cut their cloud costs, CEO Andy Jassy said. There’s various things customers are doing when cutting spending, including switching to lower-cost products, running calculations less frequently, or looking at different options for data storage. 

Still, Olsavsky said the slowdown wasn’t cause for alarm. “We do have new deals,” he said, pointing to new customers in the pipeline. “And whether there’s short-term belt tightening in the infrastructure expense by a lot of companies, I think the long-term trends are still there. And I think the quickest way to save money is to get to the cloud.”

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@insider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) 

Howard Schultz is traveling back to Italy later this month.

Starbucks

• The Italian espresso culture inspired Howard Schultz 40 years ago as he built the Starbucks empire.

• On Thursday, the interim CEO said another Italian-inspired product is coming soon to Starbucks.
• “It will be a game changer,” Schultz said in his last earnings call.  

Nearly 40 years ago, Italy’s espresso culture inspired Howard Schultz to build Starbucks into an empire of community-centered cafes worldwide.

On Thursday, the Starbucks interim CEO said Italy has called out to him again.

In his final earnings call, Schultz hinted at a game-changing new “platform” coming to Starbucks later this month.

“While I was in Italy last summer, I discovered an enduring transformative new category and platform for the company – unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” he said during the first quarter conference call. “The word I would use to describe it without giving too much away is alchemy. It will be a game-changer. So standby.”

Schultz said will travel to Milan later this month “to introduce something much bigger than any new promotion or beverage.”

He called the trip a “full circle” journey for him.

Schultz first visited Milan in 1983.

“I was captivated by the sense of community I found in the city’s espresso bars – the moments of human connection that passed so freely and genuinely between baristas and their customers,” Schultz said in 2018 when Starbucks opened its first Roastery in Milan.

Later in the call, an analyst tried to coax Schultz to provide more details.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” he joked.

Schultz returned for a third stint as the company’s top boss last spring after Kevin Johnson stepped down as chief executive officer. Schultz took over the chain amid the ongoing pandemic and store unionization efforts going on across the US.

Laxman Narasimhan will become the company’s next chief executive officer on April 1.

Schultz exits his top leadership role on a high. 

In North America, including the US, the company reported record sales.

“Eight of the ten highest sales days in our history [were] recorded in the quarter,” Schultz said.

Starbucks grew its rewards members to 30.4 million, up 15% over last year. On February 13, Starbucks plans to change its Starbucks Rewards program. Consumers are upset that coffee and lattes will require more stars to redeem for free.

Are you a Starbucks insider with insight to share? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at nluna@insider.com.

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets his Chinese counterpart in Beijing next week there will be plenty to disagree about, from Taiwan to chips and trade. But they will both be trying to answer the same question: How can the world’s two biggest economies avoid a new Cold War?

Ties between the superpowers have frayed over the past few years and sank to their worst in decades last August, when then U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, prompting unprecedented Chinese military drills near the self-ruled island.

Since then, the administration of President Joe Biden has said it hopes to build a “floor for the relationship” and ensure that rivalry does not spiral into conflict. Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November with that goal in mind and both leaders pledged more frequent communications.

Blinken’s trip, during which he is expected to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and possibly President Xi Jinping, was one outcome of the Biden-Xi meeting.

At the same time, the United States has intensified a regulatory onslaught focused on China, including export controls that could hobble its chip manufacturing industry.

With a new U.S.-Philippines agreement to grant the United States greater access to military bases and a likely Taiwan visit by new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, analysts see Blinken’s main task during the Feb. 5-6 meetings as ensuring both countries can avoid a crisis.

“I think the goal is to basically fast-forward this Cold War to its detente phase, thereby skipping a Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“This is really about reestablishing the undergirding of the relationship and putting in place some procedures and mechanisms to be able to manage through some of the tensions in the relationship,” he told a CSIS briefing on the visit.

China is also keen for a stable U.S. relationship so it can focus on its economy, battered by the now abandoned zero-COVID policy and neglected by foreign investors alarmed by what they see as a return of state intervention in the market.

In recent months Xi has met with world leaders, seeking to reestablish ties and settle disagreements, including with Australia, which will resume coal exports to China after a three-year hiatus. He has also sidelined some of his “wolf warrior” diplomats whose strident rhetoric alienated many of China’s trade partners.

Chinese state media struck a conciliatory tone ahead of Blinken’s visit, with a commentary in The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, arguing that it is impossible for the two economies to decouple and that the countries “should deepen cooperation to promote the development of bilateral relations.”

Despite such pragmatic rhetoric China’s actions – especially its military activity around Taiwan and in the South China Sea – have not moderated, analysts said.

“China watchers have witnessed this same diplomatic song and dance before,” said Craig Singleton, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

“Xi understands he can parlay professed peace offerings to chart a much smoother course out of China’s current COVID crisis, which remains his overwhelming priority.”

Blinken’s visit to China will be the first by a secretary of state since October 2018 when Mike Pompeo, in the administration of Donald Trump, met then-foreign minister Wang Yi in Beijing, with the two dignitaries exchanging pointed remarks amid a worsening trade war.

Joining him will be Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

Expectations for the trip are low. While Blinken will raise U.S. concerns such as Beijing’s “no-limits” partnership with Russia that the countries declared weeks before Moscow’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine, no breakthrough is likely on this or major issues such as Taiwan, trade or human rights.

Indeed, the administration has less room to maneuver given an increasingly hawkish U.S. Congress, where the Republican-controlled House last month created a select committee on China, which will focusing on countering Beijing’s growing international influence.

Washington hopes for incremental progress on more specific but vital matters such as securing China’s cooperation on fentanyl, global health, climate change and the cases of U.S. citizens detained there.

Even there, progress may be halting, particularly as Beijing seeks concessions in unrelated areas – for example, moderating U.S. semiconductor export controls in exchange for greater cooperation on the illicit flow of fentanyl from China, according to one source.

“Much like it has on other issues, [Beijing] is attempting to link cooperation with other completely unrelated issues. That … is more than deeply frustrating,” said another source familiar with the administration’s thinking, adding that China has rebuffed Washington’s “very specific” proposals.

Blinken may raise by name the cases of American citizens the United States says are wrongfully detained in China, specifically Kai Li, David Lin and Mark Swidan, sources said, but he is unlikely to secure their release immediately.

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American commentator Glenn Beck speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on July 10, 2021 in Dallas, Texas.

Getty Images

• Former ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek was charged Wednesday with transporting child pornography.
• The FBI had raided Meek’s home last April, leading him to disappear from the public eye.
• Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, and others initially treated the case as a part of a Biden war on journalism.

“Do we live now in Russia? The FBI is completely and totally out of control,” Glenn Beck said in a 21-minute video last fall about the apparent disappearance of a former ABC News journalist following a raid on his home. He returned to the topic the very next day, declaring it “maybe the most important story of at least the year, maybe longer,” and fitting it to a narrative about a federal war on conservatives and a free press.

“This is tyranny,” Beck declared. “Say his name, America. Where is James Gordon Meek?”

On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice offered some clarity, revealing that Meek, a 53-year-old, veteran national security journalist, has been charged with transporting child pornography.

Prosecutors allege that Meek manipulated children into providing him sexually explicit material — investigators were tipped off after such content was allegedly found in his Dropbox account — and boasted in a private conversation with another alleged pedophile of having raped a toddler. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

An attorney for Meek did not respond to a request for comment.

Last fall, when Beck recorded his videos, all that was known is that Meek had quit his job and disappeared from the public eye following an April 2022 FBI raid on his home in Virginia. An October report in Rolling Stone said that an indictment was being prepared but could not say why, noting only that “classified information” had been found on one of his laptops.

That was enough for others to start raising the alarm. The Daily Mail, a conservative British tabloid, said the raid — if tied to classified information — “raises serious questions about the government’s approach towards journalists seeking to expose corruption or wrongdoing.” The outlet published a lengthy follow-up on Wednesday, reporting on the actual charge against the reporter while also noting the earlier “fears Meek was being targeted for his trailblazing journalism, which has exposed shocking military cover-ups, friendly fire deaths, and foiled terror plots.”

Others went further last fall — not mentioning the story since Wednesday’s charge — and started connecting the dots. “This is disappearing someone who is investigating corruption in the government,” Beck, a former presenter on CNN and Fox News, told his radio and online audience.

Instead of updating his audience on the case, Beck released a video Thursday on how to prepare for a “HUGE cyber attack.” He did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, in an October broadcast that touched on the raid, confessed that we “can’t even really guess as to what’s really going on here.” But, as noted by Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz, he nonetheless speculated on why a journalist might get “a visit from armed men with guns from the Biden administration,” including it in a segment on how such raids are “the hallmark of a dictatorship.”

Carlson did not address the development in Meek’s case on his Wednesday broadcast. A representative for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rather than target him over his reporting, it appears the Justice Department was actually “taking extra precautions given Meek’s status as a journalist” before announcing any charges against him, Rolling Stone reported in December, citing sources familiar with the investigation. That report came after the department issued new guidance generally prohibiting investigators from targeting reporters over classified information gathered as part of their job.

The conservative website RedState suggested Meek might even be framed, suggesting a veteran journalist would not leave classified information on their computer and stating that “there are lots of things being manufactured by the government these days.”

“[T]his is now Biden’s America,” the site’s Jennifer Oliver O’Connell wrote in October. RedState, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has not mentioned the case since.

Skechers expects its slip-in sneakers to be a hit.

Skechers/Business Wire

• Skechers on Thursday reported record quarterly sales.
• The earnings report slightly disappointed Wall Street.
• Executives expect “incredibly strong” demand for slip-on shoes this year.

Kizik and Nike aren’t the only brands racing to get laceless sneakers to store shelves.

Skechers reported record quarterly sales on Thursday, and executives said that despite some “recessionary signals” in the marketplace, they expect a strong second half, buoyed by robust demand for its new slip-on shoes. 

“Early indications have been nothing but incredibly strong from a consumer perspective,” Chief Financial Officer John Vandemore said on a conference call with stock analysts.

Skechers already sells several models of slip-on sneakers.

Utah-based Kizik and industry leader Nike also are investing in slip-on technology in order to meet rising demand. Nike is an investor in Kizik and recently introduced a slip-on Jordan. 

Skechers remains hot with consumers. For the quarter, it reported a record $1.88 billion in sales, a 13.5% increase. But the company’s stock dipped slightly after the earnings report, likely because of an outlook that was short of expectations.

The company expects $1.8 billion to $1.85 billion in first-quarter revenue, below the $1.95 billion previously expected by Wall Street analysts, according to Factset. It expects 55 cents to 60 cents in earnings per share, also below the 86 cents previously expected by analysts. 

“This year will really become, again, a tale of two halves,” Vandemore said. “The first half is where we’re seeing the challenges. The second half is where we see a ton of opportunity.”

(On the call, executives and analysts used the word “half” 43 times, according to a preliminary transcript compiled by AlphaSense/Sentieo.) 

Among the challenges in the first half: Covid-related problems in China and a US market still dealing with too much inventory and shipping chain hiccups. 

Among the opportunities in the second half: slip-on shoes. 

“We have … some continuing product introduction activity that’s going to, I think, really propel where the market goes for Skechers in the back half of the year, most notably our slip-in products,” Vandemore said. “That’s really when they begin to hit in full force in the market.” 

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t mention cuts in Thursday’s earnings call.

Brian Stukes / Contributor Getty

• Apple took a beating in the holiday quarter, posting its first yearly sales drop since 2019.
• Every tech company is suffering right now, with almost every one doing layoffs and cost cuts.
• But Apple hasn’t, and CEO Tim Cook says it still plans to invest “in innovation, in people.”

The mood in Silicon Valley has been nothing but doom-and-gloom, and this week’s marathon session of financial reports didn’t help matters.

Facebook’s parent company Meta and Google’s parent company Alphabet both used their earnings calls to raise the possibility of more cost-cuts to come even beyond their recent major layoffs, even as Amazon earnings fell short of expectations.

There’s been one port in this particular storm, however. Apple has weathered the perfect storm of swelling inflation, pandemic-related supply chain issues, and the war in Ukraine without having to perform any significant reduction in its workforce. 

On Apple’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday afternoon, CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the hurdles facing the company. But conspicuous by its absence was any mention of cost-cutting, layoffs, or strategy shifts. In fact, quite the opposite, Cook told the Wall Street analysts on the call that “whatever challenges we face, our strategy is always the same,” including its investments “in innovation, in people.” 

To be clear, the company’s earnings report was not all sunshine and rainbows. As CNBC noted, Apple posted sales during the holiday quarter that were 5% lower than the same period then the year before — its first such sales decline since 2019. Overall, it posted earnings of $1.88 per share on $117.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, both of which were below Wall Street expectations. 

But Cook took an optimistic tone on the earnings call. He spotlighted that there are now 2 billion active Apple devices, and shared that the supply chain issues that hampered availability of the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro Max through the end of last year are now alleviated.

Cook also said if it weren’t for the shortage of those models, the company forecasts that iPhone demand overall would have remained consistent through the quarter. To that point, the company forecasts that revenues during the current quarter will be about the same as they were in the holiday quarter, rather than any kind of precipitous drop.

Wall Street seems to be half-convinced by Cook’s sunnier outlook, at least. While shares dipped over 4% immediately after Apple released the report, that went down to only an approximately 2% drop following the conclusion of the call.

While that’s not to the lofty heights of Meta, which closed up over 23% on Thursday after announcing cost-cutting and raising the possibility of more layoffs on Wednesday evening, it’s also not the kind of dramatic roller-coaster ride that generally results in management deciding to take drastic action, like layoffs, to appease investors. 

Ultimately, things can move fast in the tech industry, and today’s sure thing can be tomorrow’s massive flop. Just because Tim Cook didn’t announce layoffs today doesn’t mean it’ll automatically be able to avoid that fate forever. 

At the same time, credit where credit is due, and Cook’s slow and steady approach — which has sometimes been called “boring,” in both a positive and negative way — has kept Apple afloat with minimal turbulence, even while its peers scramble to keep up.