Subject: Smoother skin without the knife

From: Facelift Without Surgery <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2015 09:32:15 -0800

Anti-AgingONDocOz

In Depth: The 24-Hour Facelift

Anti-Aging| Published January 15, 2014 | DocOz Blog

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Your busy, and in reality the fine lines are already showing up and it's time for an intervention with a quick turn-around.

This episode shows the "No-Knife" facelift with results after 24hrs.

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By Guillermo Parra-Bernal

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's state-controlled oil firm Petrobras may have to hike fuel prices, cut spending or seek a capital injection from the government next year as a widening corruption probe threatens to temporarily leave it out of capital markets.

Yet any of those steps would be difficult to implement and may not be enough to fully substitute international bond markets as the company's main funding source, said one banker who helped oversee some of the company's bond offerings in recent years.

Last month, Petrobras delayed the release of third-quarter results after auditors refused to sign off on them following alleg
ations that it systematically overpaid for assets and work by contractors.

If auditors fail to approve its annual results by April, that could trigger early repayment of as much as $11 billion of bonds and a $5.8 billion local bank loan, according to another source briefed on the situation.

To be sure, few expect Petrobras to default on its debt since it would likely negotiate a solution with bondholders and banks. But global bond investors are unlikely to participate in any new Petrobras bond offering until it provides properly audited financial information, UBS Securities and Morgan Stanley & Co analysts said in reports.

That means the company, formally known as PetrA3leo Brasileiro SA, may have to look elsewhere to keep funding its five-year, $220 billion investment plan, the largest in the global oil industry.

While President Dilma Rousseff could allow Petrobras to hike gasoline prices next yea
r, she would likely resist any effort to significantly scale back the plan because it is a key part of her administration's flagship infrastructure investment program. About 68 percent of the plan's financing has already been contracted, Moody's Investors Service recently said.

"Take into account the corruption investigation, the risk perception and Petrobras' ongoing financial constraints and you see how its ability to generate cash is severely imperiled," said the banker, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The difficulties in lining up financing underpin the headwinds facing Petrobras, which only 20 months ago sold $11 billion in bonds, a record for an emerging market firm.

The corruption scandal, coupled with years of rampant debt-taking, is fanning concern that Petrobras could lose its coveted investment-grade status, driving up borrowing costs.

Touted by government of
ficials in the last decade as the crown jewel of Brazil's economy, Petrobras has now become a symbol of the country's fall from grace. The company plans to publish unaudited results on Friday, though that is unlikely to assuage concerns about the impact of the corruption probe on operations and fundraising plans.

"I believe that no investor will buy shares or bonds with the current headline risk, at least not without the proper audited paperwork in place," said Ulisses de Oliveira, who helps manage $400 million in emerging market debt for Galloway Gestora de Recursos in SAPSo Paulo.

The refinancing hurdles loom as oil prices are tumbling, threatening to crimp revenue. Free cash flow, a measure of cash surpluses after payments to bondholders and shareholders, is expected to turn positive only by 2017, analysts estimate.

Petrobras, which declined to comment for this story, has yet to set a date to publish audited results.

If Petrobras does manage to secure fresh funding, it will come at a higher cost because of the added risks stemming from the corruption scandal.

Petrobras' 6.25 percent bond maturing in March 2024 <71647NAM1=FINR> is currently yielding close to 6.5 percent, the highest level in about a year and a half. That is in the same ballpark as issuers rated below investment grade.

OPERATION CAR WASH

The scandal is also putting pressure on Rousseff, who was chairwoman of Petrobras' board between 2003 and 2010. The probe, dubbed "Operation Car Wash," was launched in March when police began probing an alleged money laundering scheme.

New York-based law firm Wolf Popper LLP filed on Tuesday a class action lawsuit against Petrobras on behalf of investors who bought the company's U.S.-traded shares between May 2010 and November this year. The lawsuit, which alleges that Petrobras issued misleadi
ng statements that helped hide the corruption scheme, could further hamper the company's ability to access the U.S. market.

Petrobras borrows about half of its $40 billion in annual capital spending, most of that from bond investors. It typically taps bond markets early in the year, having made a first-quarter global bond offering in five of the past eight years.

Even if banks and investors in Brazil shrug off the risk of extending credit to Petrobras, local loan and bond markets are too small to supply the company with the financing it needs to undertake its projects, another banker said.

The company could still turn to state development bank BNDES [BNDES.UL] for credit, but it is unclear if the bank would extend enough money to Petrobras. Petrobras could pay for operations for about six months without tapping debt markets, executives said last month. BNDES declined to comment.

Petrobras, the world's mo
st indebted oil firm with $140 billion in total liabilities, has $54 billion in outstanding bonds. Net debt is above the target for leverage at 2.5 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, and above the 35 percent of equity threshold.

"With the recent decline in crude prices, down more than 30 percent from mid-year levels, we expect lower cash generation and this will make the company more reliant on asset sales or debt to fund future development spending," Moody's said.

Shares are down about 47 percent since the investigation began gaining momentum three months ago. Chief Financial Office Almir Barbassa renewed a pledge not to sell new equity on November 17 when he outlined plans to review Petrobras accounting.

(Additional reporting by Jeb Blount in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Todd Benson and Kieran Murray)

Finance

Investment & Company Information

Petrobras

WASHINGTON (AP) a Americans may not agree on much lately, but one opinion is nearly universal: There's almost no chance that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and the Republican Congress can work together to solve the country's problems.

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds just 13 percent of Americans are confident the leaders, separated by nearly 2 miles of Pennsylvania Avenue, can work together, while 86 percent have no such faith. That's far more than the 58 percent who felt that way just after the 2010 midterm elections in which the tea party movement rose to prominence.

The doubts cross party lines: Fewer than 1 in 5 Democ
rats or independents have confidence the two sides can cooperate. Republicans are even more pessimistic, with just 1 in 10 confident Obama and Congress can work together.

Those who lack confidence spread the blame around: 41 percent say neither side would do enough to work together, 35 percent place more blame on the Republicans, 22 percent on the president.

Neither side holds much hope things are going to get better, either. Just 16 percent think the president is likely to restore public trust in government in the next two years, while 20 percent feel congressional Republicans will.

Robert Cole, 65, says both Democrats and Republicans deserve blame for Washington's stalemate: "If you want to place the blame, it rests on the American voter."

"They're not doing their jobs, and we as the electorate are stupid in sending the same people back and expecting things to change," said Cole, a retiree who lives in Ocala, Florida.

But not everyone sees cooperation
as a positive.

"In my view, the Republicans were doing what they needed to do to block a harmful agenda coming from the executive branch," said Ron Tykoski, 42, a paleontologist from Nevada, Texas.

What does the public think they'll be able to do?

View gallery

Graphic shows results of AP-GfK poll; 2c x 3 inches; 96.3 mm x 76 mm;

A majority say Obama is likely to prevent Congress from repealing the health care law passed in 2010, while nearly half say the GOP is likely to bl
ock Obama's executive order on immigration. Another 42 percent think the GOP will block or roll back Obama's environmental regulations. Fewer think either side will be able to enact the policies on their agenda.

Tamara Watson, 35, a high school teacher in West Columbia, South Carolina, said immigration and health care are the two issues where both sides do need to work together. She sees Republicans as the bigger roadblock.

"They have fought him his entire term and a half now, and there's so many of them now," she said. "It's going to be very difficult for (Obama) to work with them when there are so many of them versus so few of his party."

Political gridlock itself ranks pretty low on the issue scale, 47 percent call it extremely or very important compared with 83 percent who say the economy is important, 76 percent who consider health care a key issue and 64 percent who say unemployment is important.

But the issue prompts Obama's most negative ratings overa
ll: 66 percent disapprove of his handling of gridlock and among Democrats, 47 percent disapprove.

Approval ratings for the president and Congress are about the same as before the election, with 41 percent approval for Obama and 15 percent Congress. In general, however, the public expresses greater frustration with politics now than they did four years ago.

Looking back on last month's elections, 52 percent say they're disappointed with the results while 50 percent say they're frustrated. Both figures are up significantly since 2010. About a quarter, 27 percent, say they're angry, compared with 16 percent in 2010.

Just 37 percent say they're hopeful when they think about the results of the elections, well below the 65 percent saying so after the 2010 elections, when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives, or the 74 percent who felt so when Obama was elected the nation's first black president. Only 1 in 5 Americans under age 30 describe themselves as ho
peful, fewer than any other age group.

More Americans say they trust neither party to handle managing the federal government than said they trust either side over the other. Nearly a third of both Democrats and Republicans say they trust neither party to handle managing the federal government, along with almost 6 in 10 independents.

But Cole says this hasn't turned him away from politics.

"As aggravating as it is, I'm still paying attention just to see if I can find somebody out there who is going to do more than talk about cooperating and find a way forward," he said.

The AP-GfK Poll of 1,010 adults was conducted online Dec. 4-8, using a sample drawn from GfK's probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods and later interviewed online. Peop
le selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided access at no cost to them.

___

On Twitter, follow Jennifer Agiesta at http://www.twitter.com/JennAgiesta and Emily Swanson at http://www.twitter.com/el_swan .

___

Online:

AP-GfK Poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

Politics & Government

Barack Obama

Addis Ababa (AFP) - African nations need to be more engaged in the fight against the Ebola virus and stop relying on aid from Western governments, Ethiopia's prime minister said Monday.

Hailemariam Desalegn said the response to the epidemic in west Africa should not
be "only for the non-Africans", urging African states to respond to an African Union appeal to send medical staff to affected areas.

"We should show that there is a solidarity within the African countries," he told reporters.

"Usually the notion is that whenever this kind of epidemic happens, it is the Western countries and other big countries that have to be involved," he said.

But he added: "We have to break this and show that Africans also are there for Africans. We should try our best to bring African solutions to African problems."

Last week Ethiopia sent 187 health volunteers to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the largest contingent of medical professionals from any African country since the Ebola crisis began. Desalegn said a further 1,000 volunteers were ready to go.

A number of African states, however, are reluctant to send volunteers, due to either a lack of means or fears they are not equipped to deal with any who return infected with the virus.
Ethiopia's health minister, Kesete Birhan Admasu, said the Ethiopian volunteers returning home would be placed under medical surveillance for three weeks.

But he has also called on African nations to accelerate efforts to establish a continental centre along the lines of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"Had we have established this centre last year, Africa might have responded early and could have contained the virus," he said.

Society & Culture

Disease & Medical Conditions

African Union

Ethiopia

African nations