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Syria peace talks set for January 22 in Geneva: U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) – An international peace conference aimed at ending Syria’s civil war will be held on January 22, the first face-to-face talks between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and rebels seeking to overthrow him, the United Nations said on Monday. The United Nations is hoping for a peaceful transition in Syria, building on an agreement between world powers reached in June last year. The deal calls for the warring sides to set up a transitional governing body with full executive powers, including over military and security entities, but leaves open the fate of Assad. "We will go to Geneva with a mission of hope," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. The announcement came as Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva in his latest effort to get negotiations on track to end a war, now in its third year, that […]

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Syrian officials say terrorists damaged refinery in Homs

The mayor of Homs, Syria, Talal Barazi, said work crews were repairing the city’s oil refinery, damaged in what was described as an attack by terrorists. Barazi said the city was providing all necessary resources to help in the repairs, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported Sunday. Akram Sultan, directory of the refinery, said terrorists attacked the facility during the weekend, crippling its ability to deliver crude oil to the Syrian market. SANA reported one worker was injured in the attack. In another attack, rebel forces, including those aligned with al-Qaida, captured the Omar oil field in eastern Syria, The New York Times reported Satuday. The report didn’t indicate if the field’s production infrastructure was damaged in the attack. Syria relies on oil and natural gas revenue to help pay off its government debt but its long-running civil war and western economic […]

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Ahead of Syria Talks, Local Truces Falter

With the first peace talks between the Syrian regime and opposition now set for January, a series of failed government efforts to forge regional truces underscores the deep mistrust between them. In most cases, what the government calls national reconciliation efforts are backed by the threat of force. Syrian troops have laid siege to many of the areas where the regime has tried to negotiate with rebels, according to government and military officials, opposition members, mediators and residents. Particularly around the capital Damascus and the city of Homs to the north, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has put pressure on civilians and community leaders in rebel-held areas, banking on them to force local fighters to either surrender and accept amnesty or flee. But in one sprawling Homs neighborhood of more than 400,000 known as Waer, where reconciliation talks have faltered, some consider surrender as tantamount to suicide. In another […]

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Egypt’s Government Struggles to Gain Footing as Dissent Grows

When the new military-backed Egyptian government lifted a nationwide state of emergency more than 10 days ago, it seemed to be proclaiming a momentary victory in the battle with its principal foe, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose regular protests had begun to wither. But the government’s problems hardly abated. In brazen and occasionally spectacular attacks, militants have stepped up a campaign of assassinations and bombings aimed at the security services. Non-Islamist critics have accused the government of incompetence or growing authoritarianism, potentially broadening the opposition beyond supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the deposed Islamist president. At the same time, unrest has begun to surface in different places, lately sweeping up Islamist students on university campuses. And notably, small cracks have begun to appear in the coalition that supported the ouster of Mr. Morsi as the government has faced anger from recent allies and rare criticism in the once-fawning local […]

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New Law in Egypt Effectively Bans Street Protests

Egypt’s military-backed government has issued a law that all but bans street protests by applying jail time or heavy fines to the public demonstrations that have felled the last two presidents and regularly roiled the capital since the Arab Spring revolt. The new law, promulgated on Sunday, is the latest evidence of a return to authoritarianism in the aftermath of the military takeover that removed President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July. It criminalizes the kind of free assembly and public expression that many Egyptians had embraced as a cherished foundation of their new democracy after the 2011 ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. And the relatively muted outcry against the law, mainly from human rights advocates, demonstrated how far public sentiment has swung. Rights activists said the new law appeared even stricter than those in place under Mr. Mubarak. It effectively replaces a three-month “state […]

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Egyptian students defy law banning protests

Egyptian security forces on Monday fired tear gas to disperse university students who had defied a new law that restricts demonstrations, the state news agency reported. Students of Al-Azhar University and Assiut University in Assiut province, south of Cairo, staged a protest, chanting against the army and police in defiance of the new law, passed on Sunday, which bans protests without prior police approval. In the first application of the new law, the Interior Ministry approved requests on Monday for protests by lawyers and political activists in front of the lawyers’ syndicate in Cairo and the State Council in Giza, it said on its Facebook page. In another statement, it issued a warning to supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, who it said were planning a protest on Tuesday in Giza province, near the pyramids, with the goal of disrupting traffic and harming tourism. “The Interior Ministry is determined to […]

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Argentina nears deal with Spanish group Repsol over YPF seizure

Argentina is close to striking a deal with Spanish oil group Repsol to compensate the company for the nationalisation of its YPF unit last year which prompted a diplomatic crisis between Buenos Aires and Madrid. A delegation from Spain, including José Manuel Soria, industry minister, and several executives from Repsol , met Argentine officials in Buenos Aires on Monday to reach a preliminary agreement over compensation for the Spanish company, people close to the talks said. Repsol said in a statement on Monday night that it had noted the agreement between the governments and would consider its value to its shareholders ahead of a board meeting scheduled for Wednesday. Argentina, led by president Cristina Fernández, expropriated Repsol’s majority stake in YPF, its former state oil company, last year after accusing the company of failing to invest sufficiently in the country’s energy sector, a charge Repsol vehemently denied. Repsol was […]

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Sinopec Personnel Detained After Deadly Pipeline Blast

Chinese authorities detained seven people from China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (386) , the nation’s biggest refiner, after at least 55 died in a pipeline blast. The personnel from Sinopec, as the refiner is known, and two from an economic development zone in China’s eastern Qingdao city were detained by police, the city’s Huangdao district government said yesterday on its official microblog . The explosion and crude oil leak on Nov. 22, the deadliest since at least 2005, adds to a growing toll from industrial accidents that’s building pressure for better safety standards and management. It shines a spotlight on management of state-owned energy companies after the government pledged this month to allow more private investment as part of the biggest reforms since the 1990s. “Someone has to be accountable for what has happened,” said Laban Yu, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Jefferies Group LLC. “Sinopec executives can only […]

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Pipeline Deaths Put China's Urbanization in Focus

Explosions at a pipeline that left dozens dead and upended cars and sidewalks in a busy Chinese port city have renewed focus on industrial facilities in densely populated areas—an issue of rising importance as Beijing pushes an ambitious urbanization plan. Regulators and the pipeline’s operator, China’s largest refining company, began exchanging blame on Monday over the Friday incident in the eastern city of Qingdao, which drew widespread attention across the country and prompted a visit by President Xi Jinping to a local hospital to meet with victims. Authorities on Monday raised the death toll to 55, with 136 injured and nine still missing. Chinese authorities said Monday that the blasts exposed problems caused by human error and that the accident was a “very serious dereliction of duty,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said, citing Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety. Mr. Yang said the problems […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Pipeline Deaths Put China’s Urbanization in Focus

Explosions at a pipeline that left dozens dead and upended cars and sidewalks in a busy Chinese port city have renewed focus on industrial facilities in densely populated areas—an issue of rising importance as Beijing pushes an ambitious urbanization plan. Regulators and the pipeline’s operator, China’s largest refining company, began exchanging blame on Monday over the Friday incident in the eastern city of Qingdao, which drew widespread attention across the country and prompted a visit by President Xi Jinping to a local hospital to meet with victims. Authorities on Monday raised the death toll to 55, with 136 injured and nine still missing. Chinese authorities said Monday that the blasts exposed problems caused by human error and that the accident was a “very serious dereliction of duty,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said, citing Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety. Mr. Yang said the problems […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple