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U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle

BAGHDAD — With American bombs raining down from the sky, Shiite militia fighters aligned with Iran battled Sunni extremists over the weekend, punching through their defenses to break the weekslong siege of Amerli, a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter. The fight in northern Iraq appeared to be the first time American warplanes and militias backed by Iran had worked with a common purpose on a battlefield against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even though the Obama administration said there was no direct coordination with the militias. Should such military actions continue, they could signal a dramatic shift for the United States and Iran, which have long vied for control in Iraq. They could also align the interests of the Americans with their longtime sworn enemies in the Shiite militias, whose fighters killed many United States soldiers during the long occupation […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Futures Rangebound on Ukraine Tensions, China Data

By Eric Yep Crude-oil futures traded in a narrow price range in Asia Monday as markets weighed events in Ukraine and China’s manufacturing data that pointed to further slowing of the economy. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in October traded at $95.79 a barrel at 0424 GMT, down $0.17 in the Globex electronic session. October Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.02 to $103.17 a barrel. Nymex crude ended 2.25% lower in August and Brent crude lost 2.67% during the month. Both oil benchmarks are down for two consecutive months but recovered slightly in the final week of August on the back of positive U.S. economic data and Russia-Ukraine tensions. Amid reports of further incursions by Russian soldiers into Ukraine over the weekend, the European Union is considering further sanctions against Moscow unless it scales back its intervention in Ukraine. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Kurd Rebels Fighting Islamic State Boost Hand for Turkey Talks

Photographer: Vianney Le Caer/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images Yezidi refugees from Sinjar live beneath a motorway underpass located at the entrance… Read More After fighting the Turkish army for decades, the Kurdistan Workers Party is now confronting a foe that’s shared by its erstwhile enemy, strengthening the group’s hand in talks on a political settlement. Fighters linked to the PKK, as the group is known, are battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to Turkish and Kurdish officials and media. The PKK, branded a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and European Union, is also in talks with the Ankara government to end a 30-year armed struggle for autonomy. Moves toward Kurdish self-rule elsewhere in the Middle East have accelerated during the crisis spurred by the Islamic State advance. The Kurds who rule a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, are receiving U.S. and European weapons to aid […]

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Iraqi Forces Free Besieged Shiite Town After U.S. Strikes

Related Iraqi forces entered the town of Amirli, breaking a siege imposed by Islamic State militants that lasted for more than two months, a senior Shiite-Muslim cleric said. “People are celebrating the arrival of the forces by firing in the air,” Sheikh Jaafar Jasim, representative of Iraq ’s top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, said by phone from Amirli, 182 kilometers (114 miles) north of Baghdad . Seven Iraqi government troops and two members of the Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga were killed in the attack, according to the health office in the northern city of Kirkuk. The offensive to free the town was preceded by U.S. airstrikes at Islamic State positions. U.S., U.K., Australian and as well Iraqi forces also dropped aid to the residents of the Shiite-dominated town. Iraqi government forces and peshmerga fighters are pushing back against the al-Qaeda breakaway group with the help […]

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Fighting erupts between Syrian army, rebels on Golan Heights

EIN ZIVAN Golan Heights (Reuters) – Heavy fighting between the Syrian army and Islamist rebels erupted on Monday on the Golan Heights, where the militants have wrested control of a key frontier crossing which had been operated by the United Nations. It was not clear whether the forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had managed to retake control of the Quneitra crossing from the rebels of the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Persistent gunshots and explosions from mortar shells and other munitions could be heard on the Israeli-controlled side of the frontier and combatants could be clearly seen targeting each other with their weapons. At least one tank belonging to the Syrian army was also involved and some rebels could be seen a few meters (yards) away from the frontier fence. A large Syrian flag that had been flying for days between the Quneitra crossing and the abandoned town […]

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China manufacturing slowdown ripples through region

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Growth in China’s vast factory sector slackened in August as foreign and domestic demand slowed, stoking speculation that further policy easing would be needed to prevent the economy from stumbling once more. The surveys of purchasing managers (PMI) from across Asia told a tale of underwhelming new orders and faltering exports, overshadowing brighter spots such as India and Taiwan. That was a taster for a feast of euro zone PMIs due later Monday where any weakness would only add to pressure on the European Central Bank to at least open the door to more monetary stimulus at its policy meeting this week. ECONEUROPE The Chinese surveys come in both official and private sector flavors. The National Bureau of Statistic’s version fell from a 27-month high to 51.1 in August, as factories shed jobs for at least the 24th consecutive month. More worrying was the HSBC/Markit PMI, […]

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A Big Summer Story You Missed: Soaring Oil Debt

Over 100 of the world’s largest energy companies are running out of cash. Photo of Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos . Creative Commons licensed. Some of the summer’s biggest news stories took place in the bombed schools of Gaza, the abandoned hospitals of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the wheat fields of eastern Ukraine and the bloody mountains of northern Iraq. But one of the most important made virtually no headlines at all, and seemed to only appear on the website of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last July the government agency, which has collected mundane statistics on energy matters for decades, quietly revealed that 127 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies are running out of cash. They are now spending more than they are earning. Profits have lagged as expenditures have risen. Overburdened by debt, these firms are selling assets. The math is simple. […]

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Kemp: Why The Shale Revolution Is Not About To End

Hess To Form MLP For North Dakota Oil, Gas Transport Assets John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own LONDON, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Doubts about the sustainability of the North American oil and gas boom centre on rapidly declining output from many shale wells after they are initially drilled. Shale sceptics point to the need to drill an ever-increasing number of new holes just to replace the declining output from existing wells, let alone expand production. At some point it will become impossible to keep up, they argue. The problem has been likened to the Red Queen’s Race in Lewis Carroll’s "Through the Looking-Glass" where the chess piece warns Alice that "it takes all the running you can do, just to keep in the same place". Geologists have worried about the problem of replacing declining output from old wells for more than a […]

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Putin Suggests Statehood for Southeast Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested “statehood” for battle-torn southeastern Ukraine as further European Union sanctions loom. “We must immediately commence substantive talks and not only on technical issues, but also on the political organization of society and the statehood status of southeast Ukraine in order to serve the interests of people living there,” Putin said in a television interview broadast yesterday. Ukrainian troops killed about 100 pro-Russian rebels in the last 24 hours, Defense Ministry spokesman Leonid Matyukhin said in a video statement on Facebook today. Government troops are fighting for control of Luhansk airport and they were shelled three times from the Russian side of the border, according to the statement. Members of a so-called contact group that may include representatives from Russia, Ukraine, the rebels and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were expected to meet in the Belarus capital Minsk today in the latest […]

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Europe Set for Warm September After Coolest August Since ’06

Temperatures in Europe are forecast to be warmer than average this month after the coolest August in eight years, when Hurricane Bertha brought cold air. Five of seven meteorologists surveyed by Bloomberg predict above-normal temperatures for most of Europe. High pressure is forecast to build in the region’s west from early September, leading to warmer conditions, MetraWeather says. “September is always a tricky month as we transition from summer to fall, with a lot of pattern variability possible,” Mike Thomas, a meteorologist at Bethesda, Maryland-based Commodity Weather Group LLC, said by e-mail Aug. 28. “We generally favor a warm September.” September is the last month before the official start of the winter heating season, when demand for power and natural gas usually rises. Electricity consumption in Europe is set to decline 2.9 percent in 2014 because last winter was the region’s mildest in seven years and economies are in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple