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200 fleeing S. Sudan violence die after boat sinks

AP Photo JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — A boat carrying civilians desperately fleeing heavy violence in South Sudan sank while crossing the Nile River, killing some 200 people, a military official said Tuesday, as fighting between rebels and government forces moved closer to the capital. Warfare in the world’s newest state has displaced more than 400,000 people since mid-December, with the front lines constantly shifting as loyalist troops and renegade forces gain and lose territory in battles often waged along ethnic lines. A boat fleeing violence on the Nile carrying mostly women and children sank on Saturday, killing at least 200 people, according to Lt. Col Aguer, the South Sudanese military spokesman. He also said there was fighting about 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the South Sudanese capital of Juba. Heavy fighting erupted in Malakal, the capital of oil-producing Upper Nile state, which renegade forces briefly held before […]

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South Sudan Army Retakes Key Oil Town

South Sudan’s army retook a strategic oil town Tuesday after a rebel incursion sent thousands fleeing and imperiled crude output in sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest oil producer. "By 4 p.m. the rebels were fleeing Malakal," said South Sudan’s military spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer. The fighting around Malakal, which began on Saturday and continued through Tuesday, caused civilians to abandon their homes and some to join rebel forces, according to Col. Aguer. "They were agitated to come and attack Malakal and take whatever property they can as an incentive," he said. Complicating Malakal’s defense, soldiers at a base outside the town in recent days have defected to join the rebels loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar in their fight against the government led by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir. Fighting has raged since a political dispute between Messrs. Machar and Kiir last month sparked a conflict between army […]

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Pirate attacks dropped 40 percent since 2011 peak

The seafaring association says that pirate attacks at sea have dropped 40 percent since their peak in 2011 thanks to a huge drop in attacks off Somalia. The International Maritime Bureau says that there were only seven attacks and attempted attacks off Somalia last year, down from 49 in 2012 and 160 in 2011, the epidemic’s peak. The Somalia piracy problem was cracked after armed guards were placed on ships and because of an increase in patrols by international naval forces. The maritime bureau said more than 300 people were taken hostage at sea last year. Indonesia saw the most pirate attacks last year with 106. Nigeria was second with 31. © 2014 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use . Latest News Latest Winter […]

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China Dwarfs U.S. in Monetary Stimulus

Move over, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke. Step aside, Mario Draghi and Haruhiko Kuroda. Compared with Zhou Xiaochuan, the longtime governor of the People’s Bank of China, they are all lightweights when it comes to monetary stimulus. The latest data released by China on Wednesday shows that the country’s rapid growth in money supply has continued. Mr. Zhou and his colleagues have only begun the difficult and dangerous task of reining it in —– a task that still lies ahead of the United States Federal Reserve as it begins its own gradual taper this year. China’s money supply, broadly measured, has now tripled the money sloshing around its economy since the end of 2006. That dwarfs the indirect effects of quantitative easing in the United States, where the broadly measured money supply rose only 55 percent from 2006 through the end of November. China’s tidal wave […]

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Australia heat wave prompts fire alerts

Australians headed to the beach as temperatures soared South-east Australia has been hit with extreme hot weather, with temperatures of over 40C in some areas, and several bushfire warnings in place. In Victoria state, lightning strikes sparked more than 250 fires on Tuesday night, fire authorities said. A fire ban has been issued across the state. In Melbourne, a tennis player and a ball boy at the Australian Open collapsed in the heat. Temperatures in the city remained above 30C for much of Tuesday night. Country Fire Authority Chief Officer Euan Ferguson said in a statement: "The extreme temperatures [in Victoria] over the coming three days will test fire services and the community… it’s critical we minimise the risk of any fires before Friday." Road tar melting Meanwhile Adelaide, the capital of […]

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Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong

Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong Page added on January 14, 2014 What is correct way to model the future course of energy and the economy? There are clearly huge amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground.  With different approaches, researchers can obtain vastly different indications. I will show that the real issue is most researchers are modeling the wrong limit . Most researchers assume that the limit that they should be concerned with is the amount of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground. This is the wrong limit . While in theory we will eventually hit this limit, because of the way fossil fuels are integrated into the rest of the economy, we hit financial limits much earlier . These financial limits include lack of investment capital, inability of governments to collect enough taxes to fund their programs, and […]

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North Dakota Oil Boom Seen Adding Costs for Rail Safety

Crude oil shipped by railroad from North Dakota is drawing fresh scrutiny from regulators concerned that the cargo is adding environmental and safety hazards, something that analysts say could raise costs. The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration is investigating whether chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing are corroding rail tank cars and increasing risks. Separately, three pipeline companies including Enbridge Inc. (ENB) warned regulators that North Dakota oil with too much hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic and flammable, was reaching terminals and putting workers at risk. Until last month, safety advocates’ chief worry was spills in derailments. After tank cars blew up July 6 on a train in Quebec , investigators in Canada are considering whether the composition of the crude, which normally doesn’t explode, may have played a role in the accident that killed 47 people. The oil was […]

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Rail Accidents Seen Pushing Obama to Approve Keystone XL

Recent railroad accidents are increasing the chances President Barack Obama will approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada , said Senator John Hoeven , a North Dakota Republican. Hoeven, who supports TransCanada Corp.’s (TRP) proposed link between Alberta’s oil sands and U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, today said the debate is starting to swing back and put “more pressure on him to approve” the pipeline. Accidents like the explosion of a BNSF Railway Co. train hauling oil tanker cars about 25 miles west of Fargo, North Dakota, forcing the evacuation of a nearby town, shows more pipelines are needed to safely carry the rising production of U.S. oil to market, Hoeven said at a breakfast with Bloomberg Government reporters and editors. Related: The State Department is overseeing completion of an environmental assessment of the pipeline. Hoeven, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said agency officials told him in […]

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Ford says more cars are not the answer to cities’ problems

Drivers deserted the big three US brands and their once-popular sport utility vehicles in favour of smaller cars from Asian and European marques ©Getty Drivers deserted the big three US brands and their once-popular sport utility vehicles in favour of smaller cars from Asian and European marques Ford Motor , which pioneered the affordable mass-produced motor car, is looking to play a bigger role in building public transport vehicles or integrating cities’ transport systems as it grapples with the growing challenge of helping people move around the world’s traffic-choked cities. Alan Mulally, Ford’s chief executive, said questions of “personal mobility” and “quality of life” were some of the “most important and exciting developments” around the world and simply providing more and more cars was “not going to work”. Mr Mulally’s comments at a Detroit auto show event offer a rare insight into a senior auto executive’s thinking about the […]

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Recent Derailments Raise Concerns Over North Dakota Crude Traveling by Rail Through Cities

Every day, a train more than a mile long travels alongside a highway in Albany, N.Y., a half-mile from the state capitol building and even closer to houses. Its cargo is crude oil from North Dakota, which federal regulators and railroads fear is more explosive than other oils. In the past year, Albany has become an unlikely hub for the U.S. oil business, taking in shipments by rail and sending them out by ship down the Hudson River to refineries. Now officials there are trying to get up to speed on how to handle a potential oil-train accident, as are their peers from Chicago to Denver to New Orleans. Railroad officials don’t like to talk about it, but oil trains are rumbling through many large cities because of surging output from North Dakota’s Bakken shale. Functioning as pipelines on rails, tanker cars full of oil pass through Detroit, Philadelphia, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple