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Report: Iran refutes claim supreme leader wrote US president

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has denied a report that its supreme leader wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, the Islamic Republic’s official news agency reported, as the country negotiates with world powers over its contested nuclear program. The IRNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham as saying the report Saturday by the Wall Street Journal was "an unprofessional media game." "The U.S. president has a record of sending letters and in some cases Iran responded to his letters," Afkham said Sunday. Neither she nor the IRNA report elaborated on her comments, though Afkham said Iran had no immediate plans to write Obama again. The Wall Street Journal report said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote Obama in recent weeks in response to a letter by the U.S. president asking Iran to work with an American-led coalition fighting the extremist Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. […]

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Bahrain joins Emirates in sending fighter planes to Jordan

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — The Gulf island nation of Bahrain says it has deployed fighter planes to Jordan, a day after it announced plans to send troops to the kingdom. Bahrain’s brief statement early Monday said the planes would "participate in the international efforts aiming to eliminate terrorism." It did not provide details, and military officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet and like Jordan is part of the U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group. Gulf neighbor the United Arab Emirates previously deployed a squadron of F-16 fighters to Jordan. Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa visited Jordan last week, and his government on Sunday announced it was sending an unspecified number of troops to help support Jordan.

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Libya Pipeline Explosion Called Sabotage

Libyan oil officials have blamed saboteurs for blowing up a pipeline and stopping flows from the country’s largest oil field. The fire from the Saturday explosion was extinguished on Sunday, the state-owned National Oil Co. said. The blast affected the pipeline from Sarir, until now the country’s highest-producing oil field at 185,000 barrels a day, said the company on its website over the weekend. The blast came after gunmen assaulted a U.S.-Libyan oil field Friday and less than two weeks after gunmen claiming to represent Islamic State killed nine guards and kidnapped at least three workers at a nearby Libyan-French facility. The field attacked on Saturday is operated by an NOC subsidiary. Libya’s production level fell to about 325,000 barrels a day in January from almost 900,000 barrels in October. Production has been dented by an armed conflict between two rival governments and now oil officials fear foreign terrorist […]

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In Iraq, Kirkuk remains a question mark

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters stand guard on the outskirts of Mosul January 26, 2015. (Stringer/Iraq/Reuters) KIRKUK, Iraq The view from the roof of Gov. Najmaldin Karim’s office shows this multiethnic city laid out below. He points toward the Sunni suburb of Huwija about 15 miles west, which is controlled by the Islamic State. Two weeks ago, the extremists staged a ferocious assault there that almost broke through Kirkuk’s defense lines. “ISIS has its eyes on Kirkuk. It is the big prize for them,” says Karim, using the term for the enemy that’s common here. This very morning, a gray day when poor visibility favored the attackers, the Islamic State launched an artillery and mortar strike from a Sunni suburb called Daquq, south of the city. Coalition airstrikes have pounded ISIS targets here twice this week. Kirkuk province sits uneasily on the fault line with Kurdistan to the east, the Shiite-led Baghdad […]

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China must guarantee minimum 6.5 percent annual GDP growth in five-year plan: state media

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China needs to guarantee a "bottom line" of 6.5 percent annual economic growth for its 13th five-year-plan, a state newspaper quoted the director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Department of Planning, Xu Lin as saying. That would mark the lowest annual growth rate since 1990. The comments by Xu, made on Feb. 14 at the "50 Forum Annual Meeting" – a gathering of Chinese economists – is also an acknowledgment that China is switching to a more sustainable pace of growth from the double-digit rates of the recent past. If this year’s GDP growth is 7 percent, then the "bottom line" for annual GDP growth in the 13th five-year-plan needs to be at least 6.5 percent, the China Securities Journal quoted Xu as saying. China’s economy grew at 7.4 percent in 2014, its slowest pace in 24 years, dragged down by cooling property […]

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China ‘Teapot’ Refineries May Access Imported Oil Under New Rule

(Bloomberg) — China will allow more oil refiners to process imported crude, opening the door for small, independent plants known as teapots to use an alternative feedstock. Refiners investing in overseas oil exploration or capable of advanced processing and pollution-treatment technology will have priority to use imported crude, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a Feb. 9 statement released on its website on Monday. To be eligible, plants must also have at least one crude distillation unit with a designed capacity of more than 2 million metric tons a year, it said. China, the world’s second-largest oil consumer, is widening access to crude supplies amid a global glut that’s driven benchmark prices to the lowest in almost six years. Teapot operators, which process mainly fuel oil, have for years sought to expand their options because it’s more profitable to process crude. China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina, […]

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China January FDI grows at strongest pace in four years

BEIJING (Reuters) – Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China grew at its strongest pace in nearly four years in January, surging 29.4 percent from a year earlier to $13.9 billion as investors largely shunned the troubled manufacturing sector and focused on the more resilient services industry. But analysts cautioned about reading too much into economic indicators for January alone, given the strong seasonal distortions caused by the timing of the Lunar New Year holidays, which began on Jan. 31 last year but start on Feb. 19 this year. January FDI rose 4.5 percent from December, the Commerce Ministry said on Monday. In terms of value, January FDI was the highest since June 2014. Earlier data showed FDI in China rose just 1.7 percent in 2014, the slackest pace since 2012. The weak performance underscored a cooling economy which is spurring more Chinese firms to plow money into assets overseas […]

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Canadian National’s Main Line Shuts After Crude Cars Derail

(Bloomberg) — Canadian National Railway Co. shut its main line linking western and eastern Canada after an eastbound train carrying crude oil derailed in Ontario. The train of 100 cars, all carrying crude from Canada’s oil-producing region of Alberta to eastern Canada, derailed just before midnight Saturday in a remote and wooded area about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Gogama, Ontario, spokesman Patrick Waldron said in an e-mail. About 18 freight trains a day use the line, he said. A total of 29 cars were involved in the incident and seven caught fire. The remaining 71 cars were moved from the site, Waldron said. Some oil was spilled. Shipments scheduled along the affected corridor will be delayed by at least 24 hours, the company said. Canadian oil producers have grown dependent on shipping crude by rail as pipeline capacity has become constrained. The shutdown happened as locomotive engineers […]

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Train Carrying Crude Oil Derails in Ontario

A train carrying crude oil and operated by Canadian National Railway Co. derailed near the town of Timmins in northern Ontario just before midnight on Saturday, causing a fire but no reported injuries. The train derailed in a remote wooded area, according to a spokesman for Montreal-based CN, Canada’s largest railroad company. He said the railway company had deployed firefighting and environmental crews to the scene. The cause of the incident wasn’t yet known, he said. “Our emergency crews continue to conduct a full site assessment to determine the number of rail cars derailed and involved in the fire, and if any product has been spilled,” said CN spokesman Patrick Waldron in an emailed statement on Sunday afternoon. “Seventy-one cars of the 100-car train have been safely moved away from the derailment site. Early site assessments indicate that at total of 29 cars are involved in the incident. That […]

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BP’s battles leave it vulnerable to major move

BP is a shadow of its pre-Gulf of Mexico spill self, having sold more than half its pipelines, 35% of wells and 12% of reserves As head of the world’s biggest energy company, ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson has the clout to snap up BP in a single bite If ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson really wanted to, he could snap up BP in a single bite. Of all the UK major’s rivals, Exxon, the world’s biggest energy company, has the firepower to swallow BP whole. Could it happen? Some industry insiders think yes. Almost five years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP’s share price is languishing 30 per cent below where it was before the oil spill. BP’s total shareholder return has sharply underperformed those of its peers over the past decade. The near-50 per cent tumble in oil prices since the summer — […]

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