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| China paves way to charge ally of former security tsar in graft crackdown Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 08:00 PM PST  A former vice minister of public security and ally of China's retired domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang, has resigned from his position as a national lawmaker, state media said, possibly opening the way for criminal charges against him. Li Dongsheng was formally sacked this week after being suspended last December for suspected "serious discipline violations", a term normally used to refer to corruption. China's parliament - whose annual session opens in Beijing next week - has accepted Li's resignation as a member of parliament for southwestern Sichuan province, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Thursday. Li joined the Public Security Ministry in 2009, having previously served as a deputy propaganda minister, and helped oversee security for the 2010 Asian Games in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, according to state media. Full Story | Top |
| Group offers plan to meet new EPA power plant emission rules Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 04:16 PM PST By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Swapping power generated from the dirtiest coal plants with that from under-used natural gas plants would help U.S. states meet new regulations for greenhouse gas emissions, according to a plan released by an environmental group on Thursday. The proposal by the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force (CATF) is the latest to be presented as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prepares new emissions standards for existing power plants, due for release on June 1. President Barack Obama last June directed the EPA to propose the national standards to lower carbon emissions that states could meet through their own tailored plans. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. Navy eyes greater presence in Arctic from 2025 Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 03:36 PM PST  We don't think we're going to have to do war-fighting up there, but we have to be ready," said Rear Admiral Jonathan White, the Navy's top oceanographer and navigator, and director of the Navy's climate change task force. The Navy this week released an "aggressive" update to its 2009 Arctic road map after a detailed analysis of data from a variety of sources showed that seasonal ice is disappearing faster than had been expected even three years ago. It also puts a big focus on cooperation with other Arctic nations and with the U.S. Coast Guard, which is grappling with the need to build a new $1 billion ice-breaking ship. The Navy is conducting a submarine exercise in the Arctic next month, and plans to participate in a joint training exercise with the Norwegian and Russian military this summer. Full Story | Top |
| Groups urge FDA to halt launch of Zohydro pain drug Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 02:24 PM PST By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of addiction experts, physicians and others is urging U.S. health officials to reverse course and block the launch of a powerful painkiller called Zohydro, expected to hit the market next month. The opioid drug, manufactured by Zogenix Inc, contains a potent amount of an active ingredient that could be lethal to new patients and children and is not safer than other current pain drugs, the groups told the Food and Drug Administration. A single capsule could be fatal if swallowed by a child," they wrote in a petition to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, dated Wednesday. In December, attorneys general from 28 states also urged the FDA to reconsider its approval of the drug. Full Story | Top |
| GDF ditches monopoly past, invests in growth markets Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 01:55 PM PST  By Geert De Clercq and Benjamin Mallet PARIS (Reuters) - GDF Suez , with its traditional European business under pressure, plans to focus investment on power production in fast-growing emerging economies and on Europe's shift to renewables and energy efficiency. The French former gas and power monopoly plans to invest 9 to 10 billion euros per year in the next three years, of which only 2.5 billion to maintain existing assets, with a focus on small to medium-size acquisitions. We want to grab all new opportunities," Chief Executive Gerard Mestrallet told a news conference about 2013 earnings. GDF announced a 15 billion euro writedown on European gas-fired power plants and gas storage facilities that knocked the firm to a 9.74 billion euro loss. Full Story | Top |
| TSX gains as Valeant, CIBC jump on results Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 01:50 PM PST  By John Tilak TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index climbed on Thursday, boosted by advances in shares of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce after the companies reported quarterly results. CIBC shares gained 1 percent after the lender's first-quarter profit jumped 50 percent, driven by stronger domestic lending profits and a gain on the sale of half of its Aeroplan credit card portfolio to Toronto-Dominion Bank . Separate figures indicated that the number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits gained last week. The market also took heart from comments from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who said weather could have played a part in recent signs of weakness in the world's biggest economy. Full Story | Top |
| Bright prospects? China's rooftop solar goal looks too ambitious Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 01:21 PM PST  Beijing's goal of tripling solar power from small-scale operations such as rooftop panels looks overly ambitious, risking disappointment for investors who have bid up shares in Chinese solar panel makers in the past year. China has a target of installing 14.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar generating capacity this year - close to Finland's entire power capacity. The aim is to redress an imbalance caused by a glut of large solar farms in China's vast western region, where there is plenty of sunshine but not enough infrastructure to harness and transmit the power to the densely populated south and east. But unless China promises bigger subsidies and financing support, and streamlines the process of acquiring rooftop rights, companies say the rooftop installations just aren't worth it. Full Story | Top |
| Global warming slowdown likely to be brief: U.S., UK science bodies Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 12:58 PM PST  By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - A slowdown in the pace of global warming so far this century is likely to be only a pause in a longer-term trend of rising temperatures, the science academies of the United States and Britain said on Thursday. Since an exceptionally warm 1998, there has been "a short-term slowdown in the warming of Earth's surface," Britain's Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said in a report. But, they said, that "does not invalidate our understanding of long-term changes in global temperature arising from human-induced changes in greenhouse gases." The warming slowdown has emboldened those who question the evidence about climate change and ask whether a shift in investments towards renewable energies such as wind and solar power, advocated by many experts, is really needed. A build-up of greenhouse gases from human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels, is warming the atmosphere and the oceans, raising sea levels and melting Arctic ice, the report said, supporting the long-held view of a U.N. panel of climate scientists. Full Story | Top |
| Actelion diarrhea treatment gets fast-track from U.S. FDA Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 09:28 AM PST ZURICH (Reuters) - Actelion Ltd, Europe's biggest biotech company, said on Thursday that the U.S. health regulator has granted fast-track status to its antibiotic treatment for diarrhea. A fast track designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) speeds up regulatory review of drugs that aim to treat serious diseases and fill unmet medical needs. Actelion said the FDA was also designating Cadazolid as a treatment for infectious diseases, which means the drug would get a nine-month priority review if it completes current late-stage trials successfully. ... Full Story | Top |
| Britain sets out plans for first '3-parent' IVF babies Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 08:58 AM PST By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - Britain proposed new regulations on Thursday that would make it the first country in the world to offer "three-parent" fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on incurable diseases to their children. The technique is known as three-parent in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor. The treatment, only at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, would for the first time involve implanting genetically modified embryos into women. The process involves intervening in the fertilisation process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy. Full Story | Top |
| Omani CEO jailed for 23 years in graft case: court Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 08:30 AM PST A court sentenced the CEO of state-owned Oman Oil Company to a total of 23 years in jail on Thursday for accepting bribes, abuse of office and money laundering, the most severe punishment meted out in a series of corruption trials that began last year. The judge at the Court of First Instance in Muscat also convicted Adel al-Raisi, a former aide to the minister of the now-dissolved economy ministry, of organizing a bribe made by a senior official at a South Korea-based firm to Oman Oil Company CEO, Ahmad al-Wahaibi, and sentenced him to 10 years in jail. The court found the vice CEO of the Korean-based LGI, named in court as Myung Jao Yoo, guilty of paying $8 million to a Caribbean-registered company owned by Wahaibi after winning a billion rial petrochemical project in Sohar Port in Oman. Oman's Sultan Qaboos has waged an anti-graft campaign to defuse mass protests in several Omani cities in 2011 that were mainly directed against graft and to demand jobs, issues that fuelled uprisings around the Arab world in the same year. Full Story | Top |
| Zimbabwe hit by power cuts after fault at major plant Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 07:49 AM PST Zimbabwe has been hit by severe electricity outages following a breakdown at a power plant that accounts for about half its national production, state utility ZESA said on Thursday. "There will be an increase in load-shedding until the situation returns to normal," ZESA said in a statement. Hwange thermal power station in the northwest of the country, which produces 500-600 MW of power, had halted production due to a "fault that caused a malfunction," it added. Zimbabwe produces 1,200 MW of electricity, most of it from Hwange and a hydropower station on the Kariba dam. Full Story | Top |
| Twelve dead in Qatar restaurant gas explosion: news agency Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 07:47 AM PST  By Amena Bakr DOHA (Reuters) - Twelve people including two children were killed on Thursday when a gas tank exploded at a Turkish restaurant in the Qatari capital Doha, authorities in the Gulf Arab state reported. About 30 others were injured in the blast at the Istanbul Restaurant that one security source said was accidental. Major General Saad bin Jassim al-Khalifi, Qatar's head of public security, said non-Qatari Arabs, Asians and one Qatari were among the dead and wounded. Preliminary investigations suggested a gas tank exploded, setting off a fire and causing part of the building to collapse, he told a news conference. Full Story | Top |
| Morocco opens final tender on wind farms worth $1.7 bln Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 07:21 AM PST  By Aziz El Yaakoubi RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco has opened a final tender for construction of five wind farms totalling 850 megawatts, worth an estimated $1.7 billion, for which five consortia have been pre-qualified, state-run power utility ONEE said. Groups led by Spain's Acciona, France's EDF, Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power, Morocco's royal holding company Nareva, Britain's International Power won pre-qualification last year. "It is one of the biggest wind farm projects in the world," the utility said in a statement on Thursday. Morocco aims to tap its wind potential to increase power generation from wind farms to 2,000 MW by 2020 from 280 MW currently at a cost of more than 30 billion dirhams. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. calls on Russia to be transparent, avoid risky Ukraine steps Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 06:40 AM PST Russia must be transparent about military exercises along Ukraine's border and not take any steps that could be misinterpreted or "lead to miscalculation during a delicate time," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered 150,000 troops to be ready for war games near Ukraine on Wednesday, and on Thursday, Russia put fighter jets on combat alert. Hagel, following NATO talks on Ukraine, said the United States expected other nations to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and avoid provocative actions. Full Story | Top |
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