Bangladesh has granted Conoco Phillips of the US and Ireland's Tullow Oil three offshore exploration blocks in disputed waters in the Bay of Bengal. The firms have been given the right to explore for gas, despite ownership claims on some of the territory by neighbouring India and Burma. The oil firms will spend $160.5m (£98m) on exploring the area. The offshore bidding round was introduced last year by the then army-backed interim government. Consumption rate "The government approved the leasing out of two deep-water offshore gas blocks to Conoco Phillips and one shallow water block to Tullow for oil and gas exploration in the untapped areas of the Bay of Bengal," said Mohammad Muqtadir Ali, of state-run Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation. The results of the exploration by the two firms should come within five years. "The government is not in favour of awarding more than two blocks to a single company," Mr Ali added. The decision on awarding the gas blocks was made by the elected government, which came to power in a late-2008 election. Award of the gas exploration contracts has been made after it was estimated that the country's current gas reserves would run out by 2014-2015 at the present consumption rate. | |
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Oil firms win Bangladesh rights
Sunday, August 16, 2009
UK Afghanistan deaths pass 200
Three British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, taking the number of UK fatalities to 204. The Ministry of Defence said the soldiers were from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. They died following an explosion while on patrol near Sangin in Helmand province on Sunday morning. Next of kin have been informed. Earlier, Gordon Brown admitted it had been "a very difficult summer", but said progress was being made. Speaking about the most recent deaths, Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said "each and every death is a tragedy". "Words mean very little in such an extremely sad situation but our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of these brave soldiers, " he said. "We share their pain and mourn the loss of these true British heroes." | |
Mourners call to 'punish police'
The bodies of two youths, who were arrested by the police in the previous night, were found by the sea shore of Angulana on Thursday morning
Politicians from the ruling and opposition parties have supported calls by residents in Angulana for tough punishments for police officers accused of killing two youths.
Mourners gathered to pay last respect for Dinesh Tharanga Fernando and Dhanushaka Udaya Aponsu killed in custody last week called on the police chief to impose death penalty on those found guilty of the murders.
The youth were arrested after a complaint made by a woman in the same locality on Wednesday evening and their bodies were found by the sea shore of Angulana, near Colombo, on Thursday morning.
Police 'involved'
Police spokesman SSP Ranjith Gunasekara said that initial investigations have revealed that the police officers taken in to custody are involved in the killing.
Leader of the National Freedom Front (NFF), Wimal Weerawansa, MP, said the accused police officers have 'ruined the good name of the war veterans' who safeguard the country from the LTTE.
Police in Sri Lanka are accused of a series of abductions, killings and brutal beatings in recent weeks
"Tough action should be taken against these police officers, including the officer in charge, who committed this brutal killing," he told BBC Sandeshaya at the funeral.
However, Ranjan Ramanayake, the leader of the opposition at Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council raised doubts over whether culprits will be brought to justice "in a country where there is a police mafia".
Politicians are coming over here and make various promises but they might later help these murderers
Angulane Khemananda thero
"Many journalists were beaten, threatened and killed but nobody was punished for these acts," he recalled.
Angulane Khemananda thero, delivering a funeral sermon, agreed.
"Politicians are coming over here and make various promises but they might later help these murderers," the Buddhist monk said.
Police in Sri Lanka are accused of a series of abductions, brutal beatings and murders in recent weeks.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Police station attacked after murder of youth
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| Relatives of victims |
The bodies of Dinesh Tharanga Fernando and Dhanushaka Udaya Aponsu were found by the sea shore of Angulana on Thursday morning.
The youths were arrested after a complaint made by a woman in the same locality.
Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said that initial investigations have revealed that the Police officers taken in to custody are involved in the killing.
“All the nineteen police officers who served at this station have been transferred with immediate effect” said the Police spokesman.
Spokesman Gunasekara confirmed that at the inquest it emerged that both victims had gunshot injuries.
Brutally Assaulted
The parents of the victims said that they received information from a neighbour that the youth were being brutally assaulted at the police station during the early hours of Thursday,
“When we went to the police station we found that all the police officers were heavily drunk” said Saman Udayakantha Aponsu, the farther of one of the victims,
Villagers said that the Officer in charge of the Angulana Police station was in the habit of arresting young boys and later releasing them upon taking bribes from their parents.
“We went to the police station with the intention of bribing the police officers but it was too late” said Swarnalatha Aponsu the mother of the deceased Tharanga Fernando.
The angry residents of Angulana attacked the police station in protest and pelted stones and smashed the front glass pains of the police station.Thursday, August 13, 2009
China vows to cut carbon emissions
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China has promised to make "controlling greenhouse gas emissions" a key part of future development plans, blaming global warming for worsening droughts, floods and melting glaciers. A statement released after a cabinet meeting on climate change spelt out the government's broad intentions for medium- and long-term strategies, including setting objectives for controlling carbon emissions. The meeting, chaired by Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, bluntly said global warming was a threat to the country's environmental and economic health, state media reported on Thursday. "Without any doubt, the frequent occurrence of extreme climate events is related to human activities," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, summing up the meeting. "The large amount of greenhouse gases emitted through human activities is the main reason for global warming leading to extreme weather events."
Some forecasts have predicted those emissions will almost double in the next decade. The meeting of the State Council Standing Committee, or cabinet, comes as Beijing seeks to take on a key role in negotiating a new climate change pact in Copenhagen at the end of the year. According to Xinhua, the cabinet stressed the "urgency" of tackling climate change and called for domestic objectives to control carbon emissions, although it did not set out specific targets. It also called for the government to "nurture new points of economic growth that feature low carbon emissions and accelerate development of a low-carbon emissions systems for industry, construction and transport sectors," Xinhua said.
"This shows climate policy issues are now a central part of the national strategy," he said. China has frequently argued that it and other developing economies should not be expected to shoulder strict targets on gas emissions, saying rich nations should lead the way first with big cuts in their own emissions. But the government's latest statement adds to signs that some specific emissions goals may be included in the country's next five-year development plan starting from 2011. | ||||||
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Israel troops 'shot Gaza civilians'
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Israeli soldiers unlawfully shot and killed 11 Palestinian civilians, including four children, who were in groups waving white flags during the Gaza war, a report prepared by the US-based Human Rights Watch says. Civilians Killed Holding White Flags in Gaza, published on Thursday, is HRW's third publication in five months condemning Israel's actions during the Gaza conflict, following allegations over white phosphorous and drones. For its part, the Israeli government appears to have launched a campaign to discredit human-rights groups in an attempt to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict. It has begun by targeting HRW, as well as a local group of dissident army veterans, Breaking the Silence, which last month, published the testimonies of 26 Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza. |
Afghanistan struck by twin blasts
Two bombs in Afghanistan have killed at least 14 civilians, including several children, just days ahead of nationwide elections, officials say. The blasts occurred on Wednesday in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar - both regions are at the heart of the Taliban insurgency. Nato and US troops have been battling insurgents in the south ahead of next week's presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai has pledged to work with his rivals if he wins. He said on Thursday that he will offer government positions to two of his top challengers, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani if he is re-elected. | |
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Police to pick up Colombo urchins
 The government says there should be no more homeless children |
Street children in Sri Lanka's capital city, Colombo, are to be rounded up in the next few days, police say.
The authorities say the children will be taken to magistrates' courts to ensure that they are sent to school.
If the parents or guardians of the street children can be traced, they too will be summoned.
The decision to take action follows an order from a juvenile court magistrate that the police detect all children who are not in school.
Superintendent Ranjit Gunasekera said that female police officers would round up all such children and bring them to court.
If it happened at night, the children would be taken to a police Children and Women Bureau in the city.
But the children would not be remanded in custody, he said.
He added that if the parents or guardians could be traced, they would be summoned separately for questioning in court.
He believed the magistrates would direct that the children attend school, and if the family could not afford this, the government would fund it.
If guardians could not be traced, he said, there were centres which could look after the children's needs.
Ambitiously, he hoped most of the operation could be completed by this Friday and said there were enough police to carry it out although he declined to estimate the number of children involved.
"There should be no more children in the street," the police spokesman said.
Under Sri Lankan law all children aged 14 and under must attend school.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Inquiry urged into Iran rape claims
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One of the defeated reformist candidates in Iran's disputed presidential election is calling for an investigation into claims that anti-government protesters were raped while in custody. "A number of detainees have said that some female detainees have been raped savagely," Karroubi said in the letter to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential religious leader and former president. "Young boys held in detention have also been savagely raped," he said, adding they were suffering from depression and serious physical harm after the alleged attacks. Karroubi, who came fourth in the June election, appealed to Rafsanjani to bring the matter to the attention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.
Prisoners "died of viral illness and not as a result of beating", he said, according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. After Mohsen Ruholamini's death, Kahrizak, which was built for jailing violators of Iran's vice laws, was ordered closed by Khamenei due to "lack of necessary standards". Iran's official IRNA news agency reported Ghorban Ali Dorri Najafabadi, Iran's prosecutor general, as saying: "Unfortunately, negligence and carelessness by some officials caused the Kahrizak incident, which is not defendable." "During early days, it is possible there were mistakes and mistreatment due to overcrowding in the prison." At least 26 people died in the post-poll unrest, described as Iran's biggest crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and hundreds of opposition supporters were detained. Punishment demanded While the recent criticism of security officials over the treatment of prisoners has been unusally pointed, a more hardline tone came from a senior commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Yadollah Javani called for Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad in the polls, as well as Mohammad Khatami, a former president, to be put on trial. Amid the public row between officials and institutions, Iran is continuing with a mass trial of more than 100 prominent reformist figures, opposition activists and others accused of offenses ranging from rioting to spying and seeking to topple Iran's rulers. The trial has included televised confessions that human rights groups have said they believe were extracted through pressure. |
Iranian reformists face trial over poll unrestSunday, August 9, 2009
Pakistanis see US as biggest threat
About 43 per cent of Pakistanis support dialogue with the Taliban, the survey said [AFP]A survey commissioned by Al Jazeera in Pakistan has revealed a widespread disenchantment with the United States for interfering with what most people consider internal Pakistani affairs.Exclusive
Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background.When respondents were asked what they consider to be the biggest threat to the nation of Pakistan, 11 per cent of the population identified the Taliban fighters, who have been blamed for scores of deadly bomb attacks across the country in recent years.Another 18 per cent said that they believe that the greatest threat came from neighbouring India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since partition in 1947.But an overwhelming number, 59 per cent of respondents, said the greatest threat to Pakistan right now is, in fact, the US, a donor of considerable amounts of military and development aid.Tackling the TalibanThe resentment was made clearer when residents were asked about the Pakistan's military efforts to tackle the Taliban.
Keeping with recent trends a growing number of people, now 41 per cent, supported the campaign.
About 24 per cent of people remained opposed, while another 22 per cent of Pakistanis remained neutral on the question.A recent offensive against Taliban fighters in the Swat, Lower Dir and Buner districts of North West Frontier Province killed at least 1,400 fighters, according to the military, but also devastated the area and forced two million to leave their homes.The military has declared the operation a success, however, some analysts have suggested that many Taliban fighters simply slipped away to other areas, surviving to fight another day.
When people were asked if they would support government-sanctioned dialogue with Taliban fighters if it were a viable option the numbers change significantly.Although the same 41 per cent said they would still support the military offensive, the number of those supporting dialogue leaps up to 43 per cent.
So clearly, Pakistanis are, right now, fairly evenly split on how to deal with the Taliban threat.
However, when asked if they support or oppose the US military's drone attacks against what Washington claims are Taliban and al-Qaeda targets, only nine per cent of respondents reacted favourably.
A massive 67 per cent say they oppose US military operations on Pakistani soil.
Forty-one per cent of Pakistanis say they support the offensive against the Taliban
"This is a fact that the hatred against the US is growing very quickly, mainly because of these drone attacks," Makhdoom Babar, the editor-in-chief of Pakistan's The Daily Mail newspaper, said.
"Maybe the intelligence channels, the military channels consider it productive, but for the general public it is controversial ... the drone attacks are causing collateral damage," he told Al Jazeera.
A senior US official told Al Jazeera he was not surprised by the poll's findings.
The US has a considerable amount of work to do to make itself better understood to the Muslim world, he said.
And it would take not only educational and economic work to win over the Pakistani people but also a concerted effort to help the Pakistani government deal with "extremist elements" that are trying to disrupt security within Pakistan, he added.
Nearly 500 people, mostly suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, are believed to have been killed in about 50 US drone attacks since August last year, according to intelligence agents, local government officials and witnesses.Washington refuses to confirm the raids, but the US military in neighbouring Afghanistan and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are the only forces operating in the area that are known to have the technology.The government in Islamabad formally opposes the attacks saying that they violate Pakistani sovereignty and cause civilian casualties which turn public opinion against efforts to battle the Taliban.
Lieutenant-General Hamid Nawaz Khan, a former caretaker interior minister of Pakistan, told Al Jazeera that US pressure on Pakistan to take on the Taliban was one reason for the backlash.
"Americans have forced us to fight this 'war on terror'... whatever Americans wanted they have been able to get because this government was too weak to resist any of the American vultures and they have been actually committing themselves on the side of America much more than what even [former president] Pervez Musharraf did," he said.