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Israeli Warplanes Strike Near the Border of Syria and Lebanon

Israeli warplanes launched two raids near the Syrian-Lebanese border late Monday, according to Lebanon ’s National News Agency, raising speculation that Israel might have targeted a weapons convoy to prevent the Syrian government from delivering missiles to its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah . Israel has struck Syria at least three times in the past year, according to United States officials, to prevent sophisticated weapons from reaching Hezbollah amid the chaos of Syria ’s war. Neither Syria nor Hezbollah has retaliated. The potential significance of Monday’s strike depended on whether the raids hit Syrian or Lebanese territory, which was not immediately clear. Analysts said it would be politically harder for Hezbollah to refrain from striking back if Israel, its longtime enemy, had struck inside Lebanon. An Israeli strike inside Lebanon would also represent a further escalation in the regional involvement in — and spillover from — the Syrian […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Egypt government resigns, paves way for Sisi to seek presidency

Egypt’s government has resigned, the prime minister said on Monday, a step likely to pave the way for army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to declare his candidacy for president of a strategic U.S. ally gripped by political strife. "(The government) made every effort to get Egypt out of the narrow tunnel in terms of security, economic pressures and political confusion," Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said in a live nationwide speech. Beblawi, who was tasked by interim President Adly Mansour with running the government’s affairs until the election, did not give a clear reason for the decision. For Sisi to run for president, he would first need to quit as defense minister. "This (government resignation) was done as a step that was needed ahead of Sisi’s announcement that he will run for president," an Egyptian official told Reuters. He said the cabinet resigned en masse […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nigerian president promises new probe into alleged $20 bil in missing oil revenue

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has pledged that his government will launch a full-scale investigation into the alleged $20 billion in oil export revenue that is missing. Speaking Monday night on a media chat that was broadcast live on state media, Jonathan debunked claims by opposition parties that the suspension of central bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi earlier this month was linked to the latter’s revelation that Nigeria National Petroleum Corp. had failed to remit the $20 billion in oil revenue into the Federation Account. "That [$20 billion] is a lot of money, and I can’t preside over this nation and watch even one kobo go missing from the government treasury," Jonathan said. "I don’t even know the figure to believe as the missing money, whether it is $49.8 billion, $10 or $20 billion. But whatever, even if it is one dollar, we will find […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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In Venezuela, Protest Ranks Grow Broader

; As dawn broke, the residents of a quiet neighborhood here readied for battle. Some piled rocks to be used as projectiles. Others built barricades. A pair of teenagers made firebombs as the adults looked on. These were not your ordinary urban guerrillas. They included a manicurist, a medical supplies saleswoman, a schoolteacher, a businessman and a hardware store worker. As the National Guard roared around the corner on motorcycles and in an armored riot vehicle, the people in this tightly knit middle-class neighborhood, who on any other Monday morning would have been heading to work or taking their children to school, rushed into the street, hurling rocks and shouting obscenities. The guardsmen responded with tear gas and shotgun fire, leaving a man bleeding in a doorway. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Venezuela Could Force Oil Market to Take Stock

The oil market has lived in interesting times for so long it could do with a weekend off. This one wasn’t it. Ukraine dominated headlines, but in terms of oil output it is an irrelevance. Libya and Venezuela loom much larger. It wasn’t meant to be like this. Coming into 2014, the International Energy Agency was projecting oil supply outside of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to rise by 1.7 million barrels a day against global demand growth of 1.3 million a day. That excess should have meant rising inventories and spare OPEC capacity, pushing down prices. Instead, after initial weakness, Brent crude is back above $110 a barrel. The impetus for this has come not from riots in Caracas or even rising demand from emerging markets. Rather, demand for oil in the industrialized world increased, bucking the trend of recent years. That was partly due to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Venezuela Opposition Cancels Maduro Talks as Unrest Grows

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles today pulled out of talks with President Nicolas Maduro after the death toll from protests rose to 13 and both sides traded insults over the weekend. Maduro last week called on governors to meet at the presidential palace in Caracas today for talks, warning there would be legal consequences for skipping. Capriles said Feb. 22 he would attend while demanding the government free opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who was imprisoned last week on charges of inciting violence at rallies. “How do I go amid the repression, amid the violation of human rights,” Capriles, a two-time presidential hopeful and currently a state governor, told reporters in Caracas today. “The presidential palace is not the place for dialog in the country.” The talks were scheduled after two weeks of unrest that have claimed the lives of 13 people, according to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Venezuela death toll rises to 13 as protests flare

Anti-government demonstrators put up barricades and set fire to trash in Caracas on Monday despite calls from within the opposition to rein in protests that have led to 13 deaths in Venezuela’s worst unrest for a decade. Traffic in the capital slowed to a crawl and many people stayed home as protesters burned trash and piled debris along main avenues a day after opposition leader Henrique Capriles called on them to keep demonstrations peaceful. "We know we’re bothering people but we have to wake up Venezuela!" student Pablo Herrera, 23, said next to a barricade in the affluent Los Palos Grandes district of Caracas. Authorities in the convulsed border state of Tachira confirmed another death: a man who fell from his second-storey apartment after being hit by a bullet from a nearby protest. The demonstrations are the biggest challenge to President Nicolas Maduro’s 10-month-old government, though […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nuclear should be Japan's key baseload power source, govt report says

Nuclear power should serve as Japan’s "key base-load power source" along with coal, hydro and renewables as part of the country’s energy plan for the next 20 years, the government said in a final energy policy plan released Tuesday. In the final report which came out after a series of reviews, the government also said nuclear reactors that meet the safety standards set by the nuclear regulatory body should make progress on restarting. Before this final report, an energy policy committee at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released a draft plan in December saying nuclear power would continue to be Japan’s "key base power source" from the perspective of stable supplies and cost, drawing comments from the public as well as policy makers. The plan released Tuesday will now be examined by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party before the Cabinet approval. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nuclear should be Japan’s key baseload power source, govt report says

Nuclear power should serve as Japan’s "key base-load power source" along with coal, hydro and renewables as part of the country’s energy plan for the next 20 years, the government said in a final energy policy plan released Tuesday. In the final report which came out after a series of reviews, the government also said nuclear reactors that meet the safety standards set by the nuclear regulatory body should make progress on restarting. Before this final report, an energy policy committee at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released a draft plan in December saying nuclear power would continue to be Japan’s "key base power source" from the perspective of stable supplies and cost, drawing comments from the public as well as policy makers. The plan released Tuesday will now be examined by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party before the Cabinet approval. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Wells That Fizzle Are a ‘Potential Show Stopper’ for the Shale Boom

The oil patch needs more brain for its brawn. The reason is enough to give pause to anyone enjoying the benefits of cheap, abundant energy produced in the U.S. New wells are fizzling out in their first year, threatening the 3-year-old oil boom. The challenge is forging alliances between two groups who previously rarely needed to work eyeball to eyeball — the people who know rocks and the people who poke holes in rocks. Halliburton engineer Ron Dusterhoft, who was charged with marshaling a SWAT team of experts to tackle the problem, can now see a solution using artificial intelligence software dubbed Cypher. One Texas well that the team studied for months should have been drilled deeper, at a different slope, to really hit the sweet spot for oil. More from the report Gas Boom: America for Shale : "A lot of these wells aren’t performing […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple