One quick prediction:

McCain wins the election, but Barky winds up in charge of the financial overhaul from the Nov. 15 summit. I mean, the world loves him so much, that inexperience shouldn't matter, right?

Arrgh!

***

Foreign companies boost their Kashagan activities

No event in Kazakhstan’s oil industry remains without due attention and reaction from foreign partners. As soon as the negotiations between the Kazakh government and the AGIP KCO shareholders more or less defined the future of Kashagan, a sizeable growth of activity has become noticeable in Astana, and the foreign guests have frequented their visits there. The details of the agreement signed by the consortium and the government have remained unknown to the public.




Lebanon's Enemy Within

Israel is floating the idea of a non-aggression pact with Lebanon. It isn't at all likely to work. The odds are minuscule that Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah will go along. But Lebanon will hold an election in a couple of months, and the offer of a non-aggression pact should play well with Lebanese voters who are uncomfortable with or hostile toward Hezbollah's vision of perpetual war with the “Zionist entity.”

Negotiating with implacable and inflexible enemies is foolish. No sensible person suggests that the United States negotiate with Al Qaeda, for instance. Peace talks with Damascus won't get Israelis anywhere either. Syria's tyrant Bashar Assad needs a state of cold war with Israel to justify the oppressive policies against his country's own citizens, and bad-faith negotiations yield him some measure of international legitimacy he doesn't deserve.




Palestinian Authority to join Middle East power grid

A Jordanian official said Monday that the Palestinian Authority will join a regional power grid that so far links Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Turkey.

Israel is not hooked up to this grid.




LUKoil proposes state-led consortium for offshore development

MOSCOW, October 27 (RIA Novosti) - The head of LUKoil, Russia's largest independent oil producer, proposed on Monday establishing a consortium led by a state-owned company for offshore development projects.

"It would be useful to establish a consortium led by a state-run company to develop offshore fields, in particular in northern seas and on the continental shelf," Vagit Alekperov said.

LUKoil is involved in a project to develop an offshore field in the Caspian Sea, which has reserves of around 10 million metric tons of oil and 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas.




Russia’s Navy is moving fullspeed ahead, but to where???

The Naval forces are becoming a major component of the new phase of confrontation between Russia and the US, which could become a new “cold war” in 21st century.

With its potency, the Russian Navy falls short of the capabilities of the USA, which is an absolute “Talasokratos” power (Greek term meaning sea power) in terms of geopolitical implications.

However, Russia is seeking to reinforce its naval potency and challenge the American engagement into the seas which encircle Eurasian terrain, notable in two main basins – the Black and the Baltic Seas.



'Insane' Russian plane hijacker retained in custody

MOSCOW, October 27 (RIA Novosti) - A man detained last week after threatening to blow up a plane flying from south Russia to Moscow has been retained in custody, the Prosecutor General's investigative committee said on Monday.

Oleg Vasyanovich, who has a criminal record and a history of mental illness, threatened last Friday to blow up a Boeing-737-500 airliner flying from the Black Sea resort town of Adler to Moscow, and demanded that the pilot fly to Vienna.



Show time for Port deals on horizon

Within the next 12 weeks, the Jacksonville Port Authority will mark two major milestones — the signing of the Hanjin shipping deal and the first containers to come off ships at the new TraPac terminal.

According to Port Authority Executive Director Rick Ferrin, the board of directors of Hanjin is expected to meet Nov. 4 and formally approve a deal that will see the Korean shipper build a new terminal at the Port.

“Dec. 10 there will be a formal signing,” said Ferrin.

About a month later — Jan. 12 to be exact — Ferrin expects the first containers to come off ships at the new TraPac terminal, a project initiated by the signing of Mitsui OSK Lines.



Maritime Market: Signs Point to Strong Growth for Satellite Providers

The maritime industry’s appetite for satellite bandwidth will continue to grow in the future. Orbit, Furuno, Eutelsat and Speedcast jointly have announced the successful sea trial of a new global Ku-band VSAT service. During the trial, a cargo ship sailed from the Atlantic, to the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, into the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean, finally stopping at a port off the Sea of Japan. Throughout its journey, the ship has communications supplied by ubiquitous Ku-band coverage. Marketing plans for the service are expected to be announced soon.

Another trend is larger bandwidths at the high end of the market. Sea Tel currently supports 120-watt solid state power amplifiers but has multiple requests from clients to support antennas which will support 250-watt amplifiers. This anecdotal evidence, combined with land-based bandwidth consumption trends, suggests demand for larger chunks of bandwidth.

In addition to organic growth, there are new maritime regulations coming which will increase demand. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which operates under the United Nations Charter, has mandated that by 2012 all seagoing vessels be required to have an electronic charting display information system to replace the paper charts used for navigation today. The charts indicate the location of buoys and the depth of the sea floor, but oceans are dynamic and by the time paper charts arrive on a ship, they often are six week out of date. The electronic charting systems use satellite services to download up-to-date charts.



Vietnam to invest $1.5 bln in fertilizer plant in south Russia

MOSCOW, October 27 (RIA Novosti) - Vietnam is to invest $1.5 billion in the construction of an ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer plant in Kalmykia, a republic on Russia's Caspian coast, Kalmykia's President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said on Monday.

The agreement on the fertilizer plant was signed on Monday in Moscow following talks between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet.

Ilyumzhinov said construction would begin in 2009 and the facility would start rolling out products in the first half of 2013. The plant is expected to produce 850,000 metric tons of ammonia and 750,000 metric tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually, he said.

Ilyumzhinov said around 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas extracted from the Caspian Sea would be used for these purposes.



BANGLADESH: Cyclone Rashmi strikes coastal districts

DHAKA, 27 October 2008 (IRIN) - Cyclone Rashmi swept across southern Bangladesh on 27 October, killing at least two people and leaving 11 missing. According to the government’s Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP), the cyclone made landfall early in the morning with wind speeds of up to 80 kph.

The storm brought down electrical and telephone poles and uprooted trees; more than 40,000 people on 20 chars (river and offshore islands) in coastal Barguna District were marooned due to flooding.



Damascus: US strike a heinous crime

Syria called the US attack within its borders on Sunday evening a heinous crime and a statement issued by Damascus said the country was reserving the right to respond as it would see fit.

Damascus claimed that the four US helicopters that entered Syria attacked an "agricultural farm," Israel Radio reported.

Syrian ambassador to Britain Sami Al Khiyami said he was convinced the US was hunting for terrorists based on false intelligence.

At least eight people were killed when US military helicopters bombed targets in a Syrian border town near Iraq after global jihad operatives allegedly crossed the border into Syria.



No comment on alleged U.S. Syria raid

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- The Bush administration Monday refused comment on reports U.S. troops conducted a raid into Syria from Iraq.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino and State Department spokesman Sean McCormack deflected questions about the alleged raid but McCormack acknowledged Syria had lodged a protest with Maura Connelly, the U.S. charge d'affaires.



Spain's Melilla enclave marooned by floods

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spain's government says heavy flooding has cut off all land, sea and air access to the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla.

Heavy rains have caused at least two rivers to breach their banks in the city on the north African coast off the Mediterranean.

At the airport, the flooding cut a 30-meter (100 feet) breach in a wall, forcing the cancellation of all flights and flooding the terminal building.




Yadlin: Syria-Hizbullah ties growing stronger

If Israel's indirect talks with Syria were aimed at testing whether it might be possible to pull Damascus out of Iran and Hizbullah's orbits, then so far the test has failed, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin indicated in the cabinet Sunday.

Despite the talks, not only has Damascus not lessened its cooperation with Hizbullah, it has actually stepped up its relationship with the organization.

"[Syrian President Bashar] Assad currently trusts Hizbullah more than his own army," Yadlin said during a briefing. "Hizbullah operatives are working from within Syria. The Syrians are loosening all restraints, and [are irresponsibly giving] Hizbullah access to almost all of their strategic capabilities."



Iran opposes NATO extension to the East

TEHRAN – Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Educational and Research Affairs Manuchehr Mohammadi expressed Iran’s protest to the extension of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the East.

Mohammadi said the regional governments should distance themselves from competitive and hostile policies which have remained from the cold war era.

He said, “NATO’s presence in a region it is not familiar with would not be to its benefit because it has already experienced an unsuccessful presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

U.S. President George W. Bush signed papers Friday to formally declare U.S. support of NATO membership for Albania and Croatia.



To Counter Problems of Food Aid, Try Spuds

VITORIA-GASTEIZ, Spain — With governments having trouble feeding the growing number of hungry poor and grain prices fluctuating wildly, food scientists are proposing a novel solution for the global food crisis: Let them eat potatoes.

Grains like wheat and rice have long been staples of diets in most of the world and the main currency of food aid. Now, a number of scientists, nutritionists and aid specialists are increasingly convinced that the potato should be playing a much larger role to ensure a steady supply of food in the developing world.

Poor countries could grow more potatoes, they say, to supplement or even replace grains that are most often shipped in from far away and are subject to severe market gyrations.




The Muslim World and the Global Financial Crisis

By the time President Obama is elected the United States will be a different country in a different world. There will be no going back and no return to business as usual. What began as the sub-prime housing market crash has become a generalized banking crash, leading to a world financial crisis, and then into a world economic recession.

There is no avoiding the impact of this series of financial and economic downturns and the associated stock market crashes and wild currency fluctuations. However for the developing economies of Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, and even for Africa, these changes represent new opportunities as well as short-term problems.

These events are symbolic of a changing global balance of power where the United States and Europe have to adjust to the rising economic power of Asia, the Middle East and the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China).


[Doncha just love how the asumption of 'The One' is always a given with these folks?]



U.K.'s Darling to Say Crisis to Be Deeper, Longer Than Expected

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will say this week that the economic crisis will be deeper and longer-lasting that the government first predicted, the Sunday Times reported.

The government hasn't lost control of the public finances, although the crisis has hurt its revenues, Darling will say in a speech at the annual Mais lecture in London on Oct. 29, the newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.



Pakistan fully committed to Iran gas pipeline: Senate

ISLAMABAD (IRNA) -- Pakistan is fully committed to Iran- Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, which is expected to meet substantial portion of our energy needs, Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Farooq Naek Friday told the Upper House of the Parliament on Friday.