[ARABNEWS] Algeria’s oil minister has called on OPEC to cut production and raise the price of oil, which has plunged dramatically in the last six months.
The call by Youcef Yousfi to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Algeria is a member, comes as the country is struggling to deal with a halving of oil prices from $120 barrel to $60 a barrel.
“For us, OPEC has to intervene to correct the imbalance and cut production to bring up prices and defend the income of its member states,” Yousfi said in remarks carried by the state news agency.
While Algeria has some $200 billion foreign reserves, enough to cover imports for the next several years, it is heavily dependent on its oil revenue which provides 97 percent of its hard currency income and 60 percent of the budget.
In a cabinet meeting Tuesday, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for the first time expressed concern over the “worrisome” situation and made vague promises of cost-cutting.
The first of such austerity measures came Saturday when Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said there would be a freeze on public sector hiring in 2015.
Some 60 percent of the jobs in the country come from the government.
Major infrastructure projects, such as public transportation in Algiers and highways in the countryside are also expected to be put on hold.
Long flush with money from its gas and oil exports, Algeria operates an extensive welfare state.
Subsidies, which amount to 21 percent of the country’s annual economic output, cover electricity and many foodstuffs. Gasoline is the cheapest in North Africa.
The government also subsidizes education and provides housing. Social unrest, even before the scattered protests of the Arab Spring, was effectively bought off with higher wages and promises of housing — all funded by the bountiful oil receipts.
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12/29/2014 00:00 ||
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Algeria’s oil minister has called on OPEC to cut production and raise the price of oil, which has plunged dramatically in the last six months.
"No. Nope. Nyet. Non. Nein. Not happenin'. Next question?"
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/29/2014 5:15 Comments ||
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[An Nahar] A group of 83 Rwandan Hutu rebels turned themselves in on Sunday in the face of threatened action by U.N. and Congolese troops as part of efforts to restore calm in the Democratic Republic of Congo's restive east.
The rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known as the FDLR, surrendered to authorities in North Kivu province in the DR Congo, said provincial deputy governor Feller Lutaichirwa.
However, many other rebels are believed to remain at large with less than a week to go before a January 2 deadline to surrender.
The international community has given the FDLR until January 2 to turn themselves in or face action by the Congolese army and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country.
The FDLR is thought to include between 1,500 and 2,000 fighters, including those suspected of having participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
They are opposed to Rwandan President Paul Kagame's Tutsi government and have for years been based in neighboring eastern DR Congo, where they have been accused of conscripting child soldiers and of brutal attacks against residents, including rapes and murders.
In May, 97 FDLR members surrendered in North Kivu, followed by another group of 83 in South Kivu in June.
Sunday's group of 83 arrived in civilian clothes and also turned in 37 weapons in the town of Buleusa in North Kivu. Thirty-eight wives and children were with them.
A further 17 fighters were said to be on their way to Buleusa to turn themselves in.
U.N. officials have pushed for the disarming of rebel groups after two decades of conflict in the eastern DR Congo, much of it fueled by the lucrative trade in minerals.
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12/29/2014 00:00 ||
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[ARABNEWS] A special inspection team from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) seized 25,000 Chinese-made products with "Made in USA" stickers in warehouses in the old industrial area located in the south of the capital.
According to an official from the MCI, its control team closed down a warehouse of automobile parts in Riyadh’s old industrial district for faking the country of origin by pasting labels of popular American brands on the Chinese products in readiness to be sold to the local market.
“The proprietor of the warehouse has been charged with attempting to cheat consumers by selling them counterfeit products and the MCI has summoned those involved in the racket for further investigation and legal procedures,” the official said.
During its inspection rounds, the MCI seized 25,000 counterfeit pieces of oil filters bearing names of brands, such as AC Delco, Honda, Nissan and Toyota, in addition to 85,000 labels and 35,000 cartons of forged labels.
The inspectors also found that original filters were displayed alongside the counterfeit items to allay any doubts about the place of manufacture. The MCI carries out inspection campaigns at regular intervals in various parts of the Kingdom in a bid to regulate the market and rid it of counterfeit products. The owners often face heavy penalties and their goods are seized.
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A special inspection team from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) seized 25,000 Chinese-made products with "Made in USA" stickers in warehouses in the old industrial area located in the south of the capital.
So maybe there is still a demand for U.S. made products?
[LAHT] A group of seven armed bandidos robbed some 300 people enjoying a day in the sun on a Caribbean beach in eastern Venezuela, the Attorney General's Office said.
The attack took place around noon on Friday at Arapito Isla Beach.
Newspapers and radio stations in the area reported that, according to the victims, the assailants landed on the beach in a boat whose motor wouldn't start when they tried to leave, so they stole a fisherman's boat for their getaway.
The daily El Tiempo of nearby Puerto La Cruz said the robbers hid their faces with ski masks and "carried R-15 (military) rifles."
"They started shooting in the air," then ordered "all their victims to keep calm because otherwise blood would be spilled."
Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident.
"With an aggressive attitude, one of the bandidos ordered the tourists to open their purses and hand over all their belongings, while the others kept their victims at gunpoint," the daily said.
Besides getting away with money, watches, mobile phones and even the keys and ownership documents of the tourists' vehicles, they also "made off with a purebred puppy that they snatched from the hands of a little girl," the daily said.
The assailants, the newspaper said, stayed for about an hour on the beach, after which local residents protested the supposed delay of police in coming to their rescue by blocking a number of streets with logs and tires.
No robbery of this kind was ever reported in Venezuela before, despite the fact that violent assaults happen every day in this South American country.
According to official figures, violence in Venezuela took 11,000 lives during 2013, but the non-governmental organization Venezuelan Observatory of Violence says there were more than twice that many murders, and the real number was closer to 25,000.
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Twelve employees of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Baku bureau were forcibly detained by the Azerbaijani authorities for questioning, with more ordered to appear for questioning on December 29 or face similar detentions. All twelve were released without charge after being questioned for up to 12 hours in the latest crackdown against the activities of RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, called Radio Azadliq. Those physically summoned for questioning were not allowed legal representation.
The office raid and forced questioning come as prosecutors are investigating the Azadliq office as a foreign-funded entity. It came two days after state prosecutors ransacked and shut down the Baku bureau of the U.S.-government-funded broadcaster.
Siyavoush Novruzov, a high-ranking member of the ruling Yeni Azerbaycan Party, defended the raid as a national security issue. He said it was necessary to close the bureau to prevent espionage, adding, "every place that works for foreign intelligence and the Armenian lobby should be raided."
The focus on RFE/RL comes during a wider crackdown on independent journalists, activists, and nongovernment organizations. As many as 15 journalists and bloggers are currently imprisoned in Azerbaijan, including Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative reporter and RFE/RL contributor.
Other detainees include Leyla Yunus, one of the country's best-known human rights activists, whose work includes the promotion of normalized ties with neighboring Armenia. She and her husband, Arif, are currently being held in pretrial detention on charges including high treason.
You may be wondering why the Russians don't want to admit why Russians troops were sent in to southeastern Ukraine in August, and for a time I wondered that myself.
Why, if the sanctions have come down hard, don't you just admit it and get it out of the way? The Russians had no problem with admitting their role in South Ossetia, or in Chechnya.
The law that forbids Russian foreign intervention with approval from the Duma on pain of prosecution is a major factor as to why they won't admit it. I think -- and this is just a personal theory -- the Russian general staff in Moscow were told to look the other way as the Russian FSB operatives, for all intents and purposes, took command of the Russian Southern Military Districts and began to tell commanders there what was needed in Donetsk and Lugansk.
A modern version of the dreaded WWII Soviet admonition, "Prikaz Stalina": "Stalin's order."
"Go ahead. Run your normal training operations, but when we need something in Donetsk or Lugansk, we need it, no questions asked," could have been how what senior staff for the military district were told.
Understand that until sometime in early August the whole operation for the Russian militia was run by reserve FSB Colonel Igor Girkin, who had been running the hot phase of this operation since June, and who had in the past run a number of other operations for the Russians including the one in South Ossetia. He was one of many mid level "fixers" for the FSB since 1991.
These are vexing questions that remain unanswered.
As for the fighting itself, I started writing about the fighting on August 15th, without a full understanding of everything that was going on. I knew at the time, that the Ukrainians were trying to encircle Donetsk city with a double pincher movement, one coming from the west supported by units near Mariupol, and the other coming from the north, to converge on the area near Miusynsk and Krasnii Luch, and that at least two maneuver battalions comprised the western arm of the pincher.
I knew that Ukrainian forces had been surrounded just prior to these battles against the Russian border in what Donbas rebels now call Cauldron 1.0, and I knew that the costliest battle for the Ukrainians took place in Ilovaisk after August 15th. Beyond that, at the time, I could not tell you if any Russian military formations were involved in the fighting at the time.
As I have said informally and privately from the very start, I suspected that individual Russian troops were being used to train local Russian speaking residents, and that Russian president Vladimir Putin probably has his thumb on the scale, but I can't tell you if combat formations were being used at the time.
I just don't know for sure.
What I do know is that after Ilovaisk, whatever happened in that battle between the Ukrainian Army and whoever was there -- however much damage the Ukrainians inflicted on the rebels or on Russian troops -- took a bloody chunk out of the Ukrainian Army and utterly destroyed their offensive capacity, perhaps for a year, if not more.
You can read what little I have written for Rantburg.com to date by clicking here.
Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country - but his country won’t say where, and it won’t say how.
His mother knows. She knows that Mr Tumanov, a 20 year-old junior sergeant in the Russian army, was killed in eastern Ukraine, torn apart in a rocket attack on August 13.
Yelena Tumanova, 41, learned these bare facts about her son’s death from one of his comrades, who saw him get hit and scooped up his body.
“What I don’t understand is what he died for,” she says. “Why couldn’t we let people in Ukraine sort things out for themselves? And seeing as our powers sent Anton there, why can’t they admit it and tell us exactly what happened to him.”
As the year draws to a close, the Kremlin continues to insist that not a single Russian soldier has entered Ukraine to join pro-Moscow separatist militia who have been fighting government forces there since April. During his annual press conference earlier this month, Vladimir Putin, the president, said that all Russian combatants in Ukraine’s Donbas region were volunteers answering “a call of the heart”.
The story of Mr Tumanov and the shadowy deaths of scores of other Russian servicemen since this summer belie that claim.
Rights activists have recorded cases of at least 40 serving soldiers suspected of dying in the conflict – many believe the figure is in the hundreds - but prosecutors refuse to open criminal investigations into their deaths, a requirement by law.
Denied of status by the lies and obfuscation that muffle their stories, these men and their families are casualties of an undeclared war. More at the link
A startup insurance company loaned $145 million by the U.S. government under Obamacare is running out of money and being taken over by state officials in Iowa.
The company, CoOportunity Health, which also serves Nebraska, was placed under Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart’s supervision this week and is no longer accepting new enrollees, according to a statement from his office. While Gerhart’s agency will operate the company for the time being, it’s urging policyholders to seek a new insurer.
Will they get their money back, or is that a sunk cost for people who probably can't afford it?
Paying money to an insurance company is like paying taxes. It's gone. Forever.
CoOportunity Health is a co-op, or Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan, one of 23 nonprofit health insurers providing coverage in 26 states. They were created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to increase competition. The fate of CoOportunity provides new fodder for Obamacare opponents who argue that the law wastes government money.
#3
Given the increasing shortage of doctors accepting Medicare and Medicaid, moving to single payor might prove objectionable, however desirable the planners might find that goal.
#5
There was a 150,000 doctor shortage before Obamacare was passed. Doctor shortage. 40% of the physicians said in a poll that they anticipated retiring or leaving the profession in 3 years. IMO a government run healthcare system destroys physician incentives.
Insurance entity goes into receivership? I worry that the government will go into receivership as the result of Obamacare. According to the Heritage Foundation, Medicare will be cut by $716B due to Obamacare. Cuts in Medicare. Obama calls it redistribution of income and social justice despite that seniors have worked their entire lives and paid into Medicare. Seniors still pay into Medicare. It is taken out of Social Security every month.
[MACLEANS.CA] After ending 2014 with a successful visit to Turkey and his 78th birthday on Dec. 17, Pope Francis can look forward to a rapturous start to 2015. The Philippines, one of the world’s largest and most devout Catholic nations, is in such a fervour of anticipation for his Jan. 15 arrival that even the Marxist insurgents of the New People’s Army have declared a ceasefire. Francis may recall that welcome fondly when he embarks on the year’s other significant journey. The Pope’s first visit to the United States, to attend September’s World Meeting of Families gathering in Philadelphia—a massive Catholic event that, with Francis’s presence, may draw a million participants—will also take the pontiff to the heart of what theologian and Church historian Massimo Faggioli calls Francis’s “American problem.”
It’s less a single problem, Faggioli goes on to explain, than a linked complex of issues that might all come into play next fall. The American Church is perhaps the most important and wealthiest national church within Catholicism, he says, and certainly “the most important in the northern hemisphere, [where the U.S. is] the largest and least secular developed country.” It’s also, as much because it reflects the divisions within a polarized America as it does those within Catholicism, a militantly ideological church, both the world centre of Catholic feminism and the home of a hierarchy unafraid to take to the pulpit with politically conservative messages.
The American bishops, like Francis himself, defy conventional American left-right political categorization. They can seem like the Republican party at prayer in their opposition to the contraception provisions of President Barack Obama’s health care law or on the topic of same-sex marriage, but like militant Democrats on the question of sweeping amnesty for illegal immigrants—who are mostly Hispanic Catholics. They may not be as economically radical as Francis, but the Pope is not, as demonstrated by his recent robust championing of traditional marriage, very far removed from their social morality.
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Posted by: Fred ||
12/29/2014 00:00 ||
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Francis is determined to move the focus from the sexual morality issues that dominate relations between Catholicism and the secular world view to where he believes it should be: on the plight of the poor and marginalized.
Am I the only one expecting a strong dose of liberal bullshit here?
#2
Hewill “ease off from the condemnations of contraception, divorce and homosexuality,” Wills predicts, not by fiat but “by encouraging bishops to move in new directions.
Classic distraction, deflection, and denial, which indicates he's probably a democrat.
#3
The progressives are scared becuase Philly is now the bailiwick of Archbishop Charles Chaput - a very othodox and fairly conservative voice int he Catholic Church in America. I've met him several times both in his role as a priest, and as a friend of my my confessor, a fellow Capuchin brother.
His is very intelligent as well as insightful, and has a ton of moral courage. He is the very definition of "a man of God" as anyone who has had much personal interaction with him can tell you.
Pope Francis isnt going to be able to mealy-mouth his way around the issues about the Family - divorce, homosexual "marriage", abortion, euthanasia, and especially the role of government and the opposition of the Church to "big government" due to its violation of the Catholic principle of Subsidiarity. Not to mention a very vocal critic of Obamacare's mandate.
#4
Here's a quote from that book - back in 2008 he was and still is very much on target, not just for Catholics, but all Christians and moral people:
"The Church claims no right to dominate the secular realm. But she has every right - in fact an obligation - to engage secular authority and to challenge those wielding it to live the demands of justice. In this sense, the Catholic Church cannot stay, has never stayed, and never will stay 'out of politics.' Politics involves the exercise of power. The use of power has moral content and human consequences. And the well-being and destiny of the human person is very much the concern, and the special competence, of the Christian community" (pp. 217-18)
and this:
People who take God seriously will not remain silent about their faith. They will often disagree about doctrine or policy, but they won't be quiet. They can't be. They’ll act on what they believe, sometimes at the cost of their reputations and careers. Obviously the common good demands a respect for other people with different beliefs and a willingness to compromise whenever possible. But for Catholics, the common good can never mean muting themselves in public debate on foundational issues of human dignity. Christian faith is always personal but never private. This is why any notion of tolerance that tries to reduce faith to private idiosyncrasy, or a set of opinions that we can indulge at home but need to be quiet about in public, will always fail."
#5
Papal infallibility and global warming. That is some two ball combination. It wouldn't surprise me that he will soon go to the UK and preach the necessity of an invasion of the Falkland Islands.
#6
Remember this is all filter through the Left media. Can't really get a grasp of what the man is doing without some injection of the Left's orthodox and prism vision.
#7
he [Pope Francis] believes it should be: on the plight of the poor and marginalized. What exactly does he mean by this? Is this another liberal social justice and income redistribution scheme?
“The poor you will always have with you…” So said Jesus according to the accounts of three of the four Gospel writers (Matt. 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8)" This seems to be the truth despite tons of money thrown at the failed War on Poverty. I don't think the quote means the poor shouldn't be helped but what is the best means of helping the poor? Maybe this proverb is the best way to go: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime?"--not forced redistribution of wealth and social justice. You teach people nothing by this.
#8
Just as conservatives Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul were on the same page in their day, socialists Obama and Pope Francis are on the same page today.
Bill Clinton was the first black (liberal) American President, Obama is the first Latin (liberal) President.
In the West, a secular world leader's agenda is enhanced when he is co-joined to an important religious leader in the West.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Twelve employees of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Baku bureau were forcibly detained by the Azerbaijani authorities for questioning, with more ordered to appear for questioning on December 29 or face similar detentions. All twelve were released without charge after being questioned for up to 12 hours in the latest crackdown against the activities of RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, called Radio Azadliq. Those physically summoned for questioning were not allowed legal representation.
A startup insurance company loaned $145 million by the U.S. government under Obamacare is running out of money and being taken over by state officials in Iowa.
