Page 51 - 072817

Groton Daily Independent
Friday, July 28, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 028 ~ 51 of 54
online campaign called the Qatar Insider highlighting material critical of Doha. The committee also paid $138,000 to air a 30-second anti-Qatar attack ad on a local Washington television station during “Meet the Press” and the British Open, according to lings to the Federal Communications Commission.
“Our aim is to show the American people that Qatar has been employing a foreign policy that harms its neighbors and contributes to regional instability,” said Reem Daffa, the executive director of the commit- tee, known by the acronym SAPRAC.
But while Daffa said SAPRAC does no lobbying, it has registered as a lobbying rm with Congress and tweeted a Qatar attack ad at Trump . It also has not led paperwork with the Justice Department despite the committee being listed as entirely owned by a Saudi national .
The Foreign Agents Registration Act, rst put in place over concerns about Nazi propagandists operating in the U.S. ahead of World War II, requires those working on behalf of other countries or their citizens to le regular reports to the Justice Department.
There are no similar rules in Britain, though the crisis recently could be seen on the streets of London. Pro-Qatar ads appeared on the city’s famous black taxis, bearing the message: “Lift the Blockade Against the People of Qatar.” Al-Jazeera Arabic even did a story about them.
But whether any of it will sway policy makers remains unclear.
“The prevailing view is that there are no perfect allies,” recently wrote Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “So whatever money the Gulf countries are spending in Washington, they should know it is not very well spent.”
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jongambrellAP . His work can be found at http:// apne.ws/2galNpz .
Mainstream Model 3 holds promise _ and peril _ for Tesla By DEE-ANN DURBIN, AP Auto Writer
FREMONT, Calif. (AP) — For Tesla, everything is riding on the Model 3.
The electric car company’s newest vehicle is set to go to its rst 30 customers Friday evening. Its $35,000 starting price — half the cost of Tesla’s previous models — and 215-mile range could bring hundreds of thousands of customers into the automaker’s fold, taking it from a niche luxury brand to the mainstream.
Those higher sales could nally make Tesla pro table and accelerate its plans for future products like SUVs and pickup trucks.
Or the Model 3 could dash Tesla’s dreams.
Potential customers could lose faith if Tesla doesn’t meet its aggressive production schedule, or if the cars have quality problems that strain Tesla’s small service network. The compact Model 3 may not entice a global market that’s increasingly shifting to SUVs, including all-electric SUVs from Audi and others that are going on sale soon.
Limits on the $7,500 U.S. tax credit for electric cars could also hurt demand. Once an automaker sells 200,000 electric cars in the U.S., the credit phases out. Tesla has already sold more than 126,000 vehicles since 2008, according to estimates by WardsAuto, so not everyone who buys a Model 3 will be eligible.
“There are more reasons to think that it won’t be successful than it will,” says Karl Brauer, the executive publisher for Cox Automotive, which owns Autotrader and other car buying sites.
The Model 3 has long been part of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla’s plans. In 2006 — three years after the company was founded — CEO Elon Musk said Tesla would eventually build “affordably priced family cars” after establishing itself with high-end vehicles like the Model S, which starts at $69,500. This will be the rst time many Tesla workers will be able to afford a Tesla.
Tesla started taking reservations for the Model 3 in March 2016. Within a month, 373,000 customers had put down a $1,000 refundable deposit. Since then, Tesla has refused to say how many people have reserved a Model 3, but its website says people making reservations now should expect to get their car in the middle of 2018.