/reuters

Evergreen and OOCL suspend Qatar shipping services | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-4580614/Evergreen-OOCL-suspend-Qatar-shipping-services.html

Taiwan’s Evergreen and Hong Kong’s OOCL said on Wednesday they had suspended shipping services to Qatar after Arab countries severed diplomatic ties with the Gulf state and imposed port restrictions this week.
[…]
Evergreen, the world’s no.6 container shipping line and OOCL, the world’s no. 7 carrier, said in separate statements that they had temporarily suspended services to and from Qatar until further notice.

Evergreen said this was “in light of the blockade imposed on Qatar”, while OOCL cited “the current political climate in the region”.

“We are working closely with our stakeholders to address the impact on services,” OOCL added.

Denmark’s Maersk, the world’s biggest container shipping line, said on Tuesday it was unable to transport goods in or out of Qatar because it could not take them through the United Arab Emirates port of Jebel Ali. Maersk added that it was trying to find alternative routes.

In contrast, the world’s No.2 line, MSC of Switzerland, said on Wednesday “cargo acceptance to and from Qatar is still ongoing”.

“The company is in dialogue with the relevant authorities and assessing the potential impact on its operations,” MSC said.

The ban imposed earlier this week has meant that container ships and other types of vessels sailing to and from Qatar will be prevented from calling at major ports in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which include Jebel Ali, as well as Bahrain.

The UAE said on Wednesday that more moves against Qatar, including further curbs on business, remained on the table.

Larger container ships are unable to dock at ports in Qatar due in part to shallow waters so shipping lines especially use feeder services, which transport container boxes from the larger port of Jebel Ali.

Evergreen said before the suspension it had offered a direct service to Doha by taking cargo slots on ships operated by France’s CMA CGM, the world’s no.3 line.

Evergreen said other cargoes had been separately transhipped via Jebel Ali.

CMA CGM did not immediately respond to requests for comment over whether it had suspended services.

Small farmers play big role in felling Peru rainforest - satellite maps | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-4249878/Small-farmers-play-big-role-felling-Peru-rainforest--satellite-maps.htm

D eforestation in the Peruvian Amazon has risen this century - destroying an area of rainforest 14 times larger than Los Angeles - with small farmers behind most of the cutting, according to a new analysis of satellite maps.

Small farmers account for about 80 percent of Peru’s forest loss, the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), a Washington, D.C.-based research group, said on Wednesday.

“One of the big findings of this report is that deforestation is not driven by sexier issues such as large-scale oil palm (plantations) or dams, but widespread small-scale agriculture,” said Matt Finer, MAAP’s director.

Small producers clearing forests for farms or cattle grazing along with logging roads and illegal gold mining have caused Peru to lose 1,800,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest since 2001 and the trend is steadily increasing, the analysis said.

#Pérou #déforestation #forêt #inégalités

Redistribuer les #terres serait une solution !

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/tyy66kidkw0e14e/r%C3%A9partition%20par%20taille.jpg?dl=0

Iran Shipping Lines sees business back to normal by mid-2017 | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3878462/Iran-Shipping-Lines-sees-business-normal-mid-2017.html

Container shipping firm Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) expects to have regained by the middle of next year the business lost while Iran was subject to international sanctions, its chairman said on Thursday.

International sanctions were lifted in January following an agreement with world powers on Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme.

“Step by step the problems have been resolved (since then), removing many restrictions and limitations,” Mohammad Saeidi told Reuters in an interview at the Danish Maritime Forum conference in Copenhagen.

“I think at the maximum in mid-2017 the whole thing would be in the normal manner (of) things.”

He said he hoped to see limitations on dollar transactions removed after next month’s U.S. presidential elections.

“That will be one of the U.S. commitments based on the agreement we signed last January ... This is a very certain commitment by the U.S.,” he said.

Tiens, revoilà #Limonov et l’#Autre_Russie

Latvia arrests two Russians for entering military base | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3122025/Latvia-arrests-two-Russians-entering-military-base.html

Latvia on Friday arrested two Russian activists after they were caught entering a military base as the country was taking part in U.S.-led military exercises.

The men, sporting a black and orange St. George flag of the Russian military and holding anti-NATO leaflets, climbed over a wall of the Adazi base on Wednesday, the Latvian military said. They were caught minutes later but formally arrested on Friday.

Their detention, and a hacking incident in Lithuania on Wednesday, will add to tensions between former-Soviet Baltic states and Russia which have been high since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea last year and its support of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The states have large Russian minorities and are on alert for an information war conducted on their territory. Russia has been flexing its muscles around Europe with heightened activity by its warplanes and reports of submarines in Nordic waters.

The Russian Embassy had no comment on the arrests.

Latvian Defence Minister Raimonds Vejonis said the incident could be part of an information war but that the “(security) services work appropriately to eliminate such provocations”, according to local news agency LETA.

The Other Russia, a small militant movement set up by National Bolshevik Party founder Eduard Limonov who wants to create a Eurasian state, said the two men were theirs.

An investigation has been opened into whether to charge them with spying and attempting to conduct terror acts. If found guilty, they face up to life in prison.

The Lithuanian Defence Ministry was hacked on Wednesday, it said. Media showed screenshots of its webpage with text saying the military exercises, known as “Saber Strike”, were in preparation to annex Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, between Lithuania and Poland.

Dans le titre, ce sont des « rebels », dans le premier paragraphe des « hard-line Syrian rebel groups », dans le troisième des « conservative Islamic factions », et pour te le dire clairement : « the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front ». (Pfiou, c’est si difficile à dire ?)

Rebels launch new offensive in northwestern Syria
▻http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/04/23/rebels-launch-new-offensive-in-northwestern-syria

Several hard-line Syrian rebel groups pushed a new offensive against government forces in northwestern Syria on Thursday, less than a month after seizing control of the provincial capital there.

The conservative Islamic factions, including the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, are coordinating a multi-pronged campaign whose main target appears to be the town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province. Opposition fighters are also attacking government checkpoints in a sprawling agricultural plain south of the town as well as nearby military facilities.

NATO intercepts Russian fighters over Baltic Sea | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3000812/NATO-intercepts-Russian-fighters-Baltic-Sea.html

A NATO patrol intercepted Russian fighter jets over the Baltic Sea, Lithuanian authorities said on Wednesday, as Moscow marks the anniversary of its takeover of Crimea with one of its largest military drills in years.

The group of eight Su-27 and Su-34 fighter jets and three Russian military transports was intercepted over international waters on Tuesday, a Lithuanian Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said.

“These were first Russian fighters intercepted by NATO’s Baltic air police this year,” Viktorija Cieminyte said, adding that the Russian pilots switched off their transponders to avoid commercial radar and did not talk to air traffic control.

“Civil aviation over the Baltic Sea was endangered because of the secretive way the airplanes flew,” she said.

A year after annexing Crimea from Ukraine, Russia announced the start of military exercises on Monday involving war planes, submarines and more than 45,000 troops and due to range from the Arctic to the Black Sea.

In Tuesday’s sortie, the Russian jets flew unannounced from mainland Russia to the Kaliningrad enclave bordering NATO member states Poland and Lithuania, Cieminyte said.

Sixteen other Russian military planes - intelligence gathering aircraft, mid-air refuellers and transports - have been intercepted by NATO’s Baltic air patrol so far this year, according to weekly reports from the Lithuanian ministry.

(Reporting By Andrius Sytas; editing by John Stonestreet)

Nemtsov planned to reveal Russian links to Ukraine conflict - Poroshenko | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2973433/Nemtsov-planned-reveal-Russian-links-Ukraine-conflict--Poroshenko.html

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Saturday Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was murdered because he planned to disclose evidence of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s separatist conflict.

Poroshenko paid tribute to Nemtsov, who was shot dead late on Friday, and said the fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin had told him a couple of weeks ago that he had proof of Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis and would reveal it.

“He said he would reveal persuasive evidence of the involvement of Russian armed forces in Ukraine. Someone was very afraid of this ... They killed him,” Poroshenko said in televised comments during a visit to the city of Vinnytsia.

Egypte : Sissi signe une nouvelle loi qui donne encore plus de pouvoir aux autorités dans le cadre de « la guerre contre le terrorisme » - Reuters/Daily mail

▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2966496/Egypts-Sisi-issues-decree-widening-scope-security-crackdown.html

CAIRO, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has signed off on an anti-terrorism law that gives authorities more sweeping powers to ban groups on charges ranging from harming national unity to disrupting public order.
The move, announced in the official Gazette, is likely to increase concern among human rights groups that the government has rolled back on freedoms gained after the 2011 uprising that ended a three-decade autocracy under Hosni Mubarak.
Authorities have cracked down hard on the Islamist, secular and liberal opposition alike since then army chief Sisi toppled elected Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.
According to the government’s Gazette, the law enables authorities to act against any individual or group deemed a threat to national security, including people who disrupt public transportation, an apparent reference to protests.
Loose definitions involving threats to national unity may give the police, widely accused of abuses, a green light to crush dissent, human rights groups say.
The Interior Ministry says it investigates all allegations of wrongdoing and is committed to Egypt’s democratic transition.
Under the mechanism of the law, public prosecutors ask a criminal court to list suspects as terrorists and start a trial.
Any group designated as terrorist would be dissolved, the law stipulates. It also allows for the freezing of assets belonging to the group, its members and financiers.
Since taking office in 2014, Sisi has identified Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national security.
He has linked the Brotherhood, the region’s oldest Islamist grouping, with far more radical groups, including one based in Sinai that supports Islamic State, allegations it denies.
Hundreds of supporters of the Brotherhood, which says it is a peaceful movement, have been killed and thousands arrested in one of the toughest security crackdowns in Egypt’s history.
Since Mursi’s fall, Sinai-based militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers, and the beheading of up to 21 Egyptians in neighbouring Libya prompted Sisi to order airstrikes against militant targets there.
Some Egyptians have overlooked widespread allegations of human rights abuses and backed Sisi for delivering a degree of stability following years of political turmoil triggered by the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.

EU rebuffs Greek criticism of Ukraine statement | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2930255/EU-rebuffs-Greek-criticism-Ukraine-statement.html

The European Union rebuffed on Wednesday criticism from the new Greek government that it had not been consulted about a statement calling for work on possible new sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

EU leaders issued the unusual joint statement on Tuesday in response to an upsurge in fighting in Ukraine, a day after left-winger Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as Greece’s prime minister.

Tsipras’s office said on Tuesday the EU should have secured consent from Athens before issuing the statement. It said Tsipras had voiced his dissatisfaction in a phone call with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

A spokesman for Donald Tusk, head of the European Council of EU leaders, said the council regretted that the Greek government could not associate itself with the statement.

“We consulted all member states including a representative of the new Greek government. It was our understanding that the statement had been agreed by all Monday evening,” the spokesman said.

“When we learned of the Greek hesitation Tuesday morning ..., we suggested to insert a footnote explaining that Greece was not covered by the statement. As Greece did not want such a footnote, it was clear to us that we could publish the statement as agreed in the evening,” he said.

In a further sign that the election of the new Greek government will make it even harder to forge EU unity on sanctions, Greece’s newly appointed Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis was quoted on Wednesday as saying Greece had no interest in imposing sanctions on Russia.

BBC News - Russia-Ukraine gas deal secures EU winter supply
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29842505

Ben, finalement, pour résoudre la crise du gaz ukrainienne, il a suffi que l’Europe ouvre grand son portefeuille…

Russia has agreed to resume gas supplies to Ukraine over the winter in a deal brokered by the European Union.

The deal will also ensure gas supplies to EU countries via Ukraine are secure.

"There is now no reason for people in Europe to stay cold this winter,’’ said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

European Union energy chief Guenther Oettinger said he was confident that Ukraine would be able to afford to pay for the gas it needed.

He added that the agreement might be the “first glimmer” of hope in easing tensions between Russian and Ukraine.

“This is an important step for our shared energy security in the European continent,” Mr Barroso said.

The deal follows months of talks between EU officials and the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers.

The terms include the EU acting as guarantor for Ukraine’s gas purchases from Russia and helping to meet outstanding debts.

The total package is worth $4.6bn (£2.87bn), with money coming from the International Monetary Fund as well as the EU. The total includes funds from existing accords with the EU and IMF.

“Unprecedented levels of EU aid will be disbursed in a timely manner, and the International Monetary Fund has reassured Ukraine that it can use all financial means at its disposal to pay for gas,” the EC said in a statement.

“Further work with the international financial institutions on financial assistance to Ukraine, also in relation to gas supplies, will still continue. But all three sides are reassured that Ukraine will have the necessary financial means.”

Donc l’info, c’est : l’Union européenne se porte garante des achats ukrainiens de gaz russe. Étant donné l’état de santé des finances ukrainiennes, c’est sur un vrai triomphe que Barroso et Œttinger concluent le dernier jour de leurs mandats…

#tout_ça_pour_ça !

EU-Russia gas duel deepens with Slovakia supply cut | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2776614/EU-Russia-gas-duel-deepens-Slovakia-supply-cut.html

The cat and mouse game between Europe and Russia on gas intensified on Wednesday with Slovakia saying its supply from Russia was down by a half and its prime minister calling the move part of a political fight.
(…)
It was unlikely there will be any impact for now on consumers of gas in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or the countries further West that receive it via there, because gas storage reservoirs throughout Europe are close to full.
As well as shipping Russian gas west, Slovakia also sends it east into Ukraine. That has irked Russia, which switched off gas deliveries to Ukraine to persuade Kiev to pay its arrears.
“Nobody should be surprised by what Russia does. They want to keep pressure on Ukraine... at the start of the heating season,” said Michael LaBelle, a gas expert at the Central European University in Budapest.
(…)
Opening up gas flows eastward was part of the EU’s response to Gazprom’s decision to cut supplies to Kiev in June. Slovakia, Poland and Hungary can also send gas to Ukraine but so far deliveries have not been without incident.

Poland temporarily stopped deliveries to Ukraine last month after Warsaw said it was getting less gas from Russia than requested.
Hungary stopped eastward supplies last week in order to fill its own storage tanks ahead of winter.
Slovakia, with the largest EU capacity to Ukraine, had maintained deliveries.

L’accord tripartite Ukraine-Russie-OSCE
(traduction non officielle par le Kyiv Post)
OSCE releases the 12-point protocol agreements reached between Ukraine, Russia and separatists in Minsk
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/osce-releases-the-12-point-protocol-agreements-reached-between-ukraine-rus

As a result of consideration and discussion of the proposals from members of consultations in Minsk on Sept. 1. 2014, the Trilateral contact group composed of representatives from Ukraine, Russian Federation and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an understanding was reached regarding the need to take the following steps:

1. Provide for immediate and two-sided ceasefire.
2. Provide monitoring and verification from the side of OSCE of the ceasefire.
3. Conduct decentralization of power, including through approval of the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local self-government in certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” (Law on special status)
4. Provide permanent monitoring at the Ukrainian-Russian state border, and verification by OSCE, with creation of a safety zone in the areas adjacent to the border in Ukraine and Russian Federation.
5. Immediately free all hostages and illegally held persons.
6. Approve a law to prevent persecution and punishment of persons in relation to events that took place in certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
7. Continue an inclusive national dialogue.
8. Take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Donbas.
9. Conduct early local elections in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local self-government in certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” (Law on special status).
10. Remove illegal military formations, military equipment and militants and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine.
11. Approve a program for economic development of Donbas and renew the vital functions of the region.
12. Give guarantees of personal security for participants of consultations.