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Iran stands firm on maintaining a nuclear program

Iran’s foreign minister pushed back Wednesday against calls for deeper cuts to its nuclear program. Mohammad Javad Zarif said the West "cannot entertain illusions" of Iran completely ending its uranium enrichment program. Speaking in Tokyo, he also reiterated that his country is not going to halt construction of a heavy-water nuclear reactor. "We’re not going to close it. We’re not going to dismantle it. We’re not going to close or dismantle anything, that is our red line," he said at a news conference before meetings with the Japanese prime minister and foreign minister. "But we will address proliferation concerns that people may have." His remarks came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Washington, D.C., that Iran must dismantle its enrichment facilities and the reactor. Iran is trying to negotiate a deal with the U.S. and five other global powers to […]

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Iraqi Kurdistan crude at Ceyhan reaches 1 mil barrels: Turkish minister

The volume of crude from the northern Iraq region of Kurdistan being held in tanks at Turkey’s Mediterranean oil hub of Ceyhan has reached 1 million barrels, Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz told reporters Wednesday in a press conference televised live on Turkey’s CNBCE business news channel. Yildiz stated that the crude is being held "in the name of Iraq," but did not mention how much storage space was available to hold crude from the Kurdistan region before it would become necessary to allow exports to start, nor whether Turkey will allow exports to start or will continue to store the oil until an agreement is reached between the Iraqi central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. Replying to a question on the status of negotiations between Baghdad and the KRG over oil from the region which has since […]

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Post peak countries: the collapse of Yemen

  Image from " Our Finite World " When I saw for the first time the data about oil production in Yemen, I was so impressed that I wanted to know more. I found a news source in English – the " Yemen Times " and I placed the link in my feed. For several months, by now, I have been reading the news from a place where I have never been and, probably, will never go, but that I find incredibly fascinating. The stories in the Yemen Times read as a tragedy written by Shakespeare: for a taste of this feeling, you may read the article titled " Carrying out a death sentence ," but it is just an example of a never ending series of disasters taking place in the country, which include some 4000 people murdered every year, including a few  taken as target by American […]

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Artillery, machine gun fire rattle S Sudan capital

Heavy artillery and machine gun fire is echoing throughout the capital of South Sudan after violence broke out. Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth said Wednesday that the fighting broke out over an administrative pay issue but that the problem had been contained. Fighting, however, could still be heard around the military barracks where violence first broke out in mid-December and escalated into country-wide conflict that continues today. Soldiers are being quickly ferried around the city on the backs of trucks. Shops on a main street in the city have closed amid a general increase in security personnel. In Ethiopia, a leader for opposition forces said that mutineers in the army on Wednesday had pledged their allegiance to the country’s former vice president, who commands rebel forces. © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten […]

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Ruling Gives Oil Giant Boost in Fight Against $9.5 Billion Ecuadorean Judgment

A federal judge ruled that a record $9.5 billion environmental-damage award against Chevron Corp. was tainted by the misdeeds of a lawyer leading the lawsuit, giving the oil giant a boost in its battle against a global effort to seize its assets. In the latest twist in one of the longest-running legal battles in corporate history, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan found that New York lawyer Steven Donziger and his litigation team engaged in coercion, bribery, money laundering and other misconduct aimed at securing a 2011 verdict against the company in Ecuador. The judge’s decision bars Mr. Donziger and his two Ecuadorean co-defendants from profiting from the award and excoriates the plaintiffs’ attorney, who has spent the bulk of his legal career pursuing the case. The judge concluded that Mr. Donziger and his team fabricated evidence, promised $500,000 to an Ecuadorean judge to rule in their favor, ghostwrote much […]

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China signals focus on reforms and leaner, cleaner growth

China sent its strongest signal yet that its days of chasing breakneck economic growth are over, promising to wage a "war" on pollution and reduce the pace of investment to the slowest in a decade as it pursues more sustainable expansion. In a State of the Union style address to an annual parliament meeting that began on Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang said China aimed to expand its economy by 7.5 percent this year, the highest level among the world’s major economies, but stressed that this level of growth would not get in the way of reforms. In carefully crafted language that suggested Beijing had thought hard about leaving the forecast unchanged from last year, Li said the world’s second-largest economy will pursue reforms stretching from the environment to the financial sector, even as it generates sufficient growth to support incomes and employment. After 30 years of […]

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Li Says China Will Declare War on Pollution as Smog Spreads

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said pollution is a major problem and the government will “‘declare war’’ on smog by removing high-emission cars from the road and closing coal-fired furnaces. Pollution is ‘‘nature’s red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development,’’ Li said today in his work report at the start of this year’s National People’s Congress in Beijing. ‘‘Fostering a sound ecological environment is vital for people’s lives and the future of our nation.” Li’s remarks, delivered in China’s equivalent of the U.S. president’s State of the Union address, reflect government recognition of public displeasure over pollution and its impact on people’s health. The weeks before the congress saw pollution stuck at unhealthy levels in much of northern China, prompting one government adviser to say smog had become “unbearable.” Choking China “It is a prolonged battle,” Environment Minister Zhou Shengxian told reporters at the National People’s Congress […]

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China Retains 7.5% Growth Target for 2014

ages China retained a target for economic growth of about 7.5 percent in 2014, signaling limits on the leadership’s efforts to curb pollution and credit expansion in the world’s second-largest economy. The goal was given in a work report that Premier Li Keqiang delivered to the annual meeting of the legislature today in Beijing. Li said the nation needs stable growth to ensure jobs. Inflation and money-supply targets also matched those of 2013. Maintaining a pace of expansion close to last year’s 7.7 percent would help sustain demand for oil and iron ore and support a global economy that’s forecast by the International Monetary Fund to accelerate. At the same time, analysts from UBS AG to Societe Generale SA say a lower goal would’ve been more in keeping with the government’s pledge to move away from growth at all costs. “It is going to be very […]

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China Sets Targets to Curb Pollution

China on Wednesday provided more details on how it plans to reform some of its tightly regulated resource prices this year and gave hard targets for reducing pollution in 2014. "The problems of consumption of resources and environmental pollution are prominent," the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planning agency, said in an annual report. "In particular, smog frequently engulfs large areas of China and seriously affects people’s lives and health." The report was presented to the National People’s Congress, which opened on Wednesday. The NDRC said it would introduce tiered-pricing models for resources that would charge some users higher prices based on the amount they consume. The tiered model will be used for natural gas and water consumed by residential users and for electricity consumed by industrial users in sectors such as cement and electrolytic aluminum, the commission said. The NDRC added it would adjust" […]

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Beijing Signals New Worry on Growth

China’s leaders kept the growth target for their giant economy unchanged but signaled that they are more concerned than ever about reaching it, giving themselves the option of letting credit flow freely to keep from falling short. The suggestion of more lending to buoy growth—despite repeated recent efforts to rein in debt—is the latest sign of government unease that a slipping economy could trigger higher unemployment and corporate failures, aggravating already high social tensions. For years, China kept a growth target of about 7.5% but actually grew far faster; in the last two years the economy has barely cleared that figure, and many economists have said it would have a tougher time meeting the goal this year as its economy matures and global demand for its exports comes under pressure. That is a troubling trend for the rest of the world, which has increasingly depended on China to fuel […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple