** Former U.S. senator and secretary of state John Kerry will leave his post as President Joe Biden‘s special climate envoy after three years but will help Biden’s re-election campaign, two administration sources said on Saturday.
** The Biden administration unveiled a new regulatory proposal Friday that would introduce a new tax on the fossil fuel industry, punishing producers that exceed a certain level of methane emissions.
** The Biden administration is launching a review that could tap the brakes on the booming U.S. natural gas export industry — a move that threatens to pit the president’s climate ambitions against his foreign policy agenda.
** Tesla Inc. had a blockbuster 2023, as its shares more than doubled in 12 months. But 2024 is starting on a different note, with Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker off to its worst start to any year.
** Montana Senator Jon Tester renewed his demands for the White House to clamp down on sales of US farmland to China following a report this week that a Chinese billionaire is among America’s biggest landowners.
** Citigroup on Friday said it was slashing 20,000 jobs or about 10% of its workforce, part of CEO Jane Fraser’s revamp of the bank which has lagged behind peers and posted “disappointing” fourth-quarter results.
World
** Trans Mountain Corp.’s application to use smaller pipes in a section of its pipeline expansion project was approved by Canada’s energy regulator, averting potentially “years” of delays in finishing a project that was scheduled to start this quarter.
** Iranian state TV on Friday broadcast clips of what it said were Iranian naval forces seizing a U.S. tanker in the Gulf of Oman. The seizure of the St. Nikolas, earlier on Thursday, is at the center of a major dispute between Washington and Tehran, and may likely stoke regional tensions.
