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| World Bank panel rejects Venezuela's appeal over Conoco Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:13 PM PDT  A World Bank panel has rejected Venezuela's request for a new hearing to contest a 2013 partial ruling that it failed to act in good faith regarding negotiations to compensate U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips for expropriations. The dispute dates from then-President Hugo Chavez's socialist government's takeover of three oil projects in 2007. "The majority of the tribunal concludes that it does not have the power to reconsider the decision," the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) said on its website. Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA said that decision last year was unfair because it had offered $2.3 billion in compensation, which was higher than its $1.8 billion estimate of the assets' value, excluding tax and royalties claims. Full Story | Top |
| EU moves toward sanctions on Russians; Obama meets Ukraine PM Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 06:43 PM PDT  By Martin Santa and Aleksandar Vasovic BRUSSELS/SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on a framework on Wednesday for its first sanctions on Russia since the Cold War, a stronger response to the Ukraine crisis than many expected and a mark of solidarity with Washington in the drive to make Moscow pay for seizing Crimea. U.S. President Barack Obama warned Russia it faced costs from the West unless it changed course in Ukraine, and pledged to "stand with Ukraine" as he met with the country's new prime minister in Washington. Full Story | Top |
| Brazil's president faces revolt by coalition allies Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 06:02 PM PDT  By Anthony Boadle BRASILIA (Reuters) - The rift between President Dilma Rousseff and her main political allies widened on Wednesday one day after they voted in Congress to look into bribery allegations leveled at Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras. They also invited Maria das Graças Foster, the chief executive officer of state-controlled oil producer Petróleo Brasileiro SA, to answer questions about the allegations that a Dutch company paid bribes to company officials to win contracts for floating oil platforms. The revolt in the ranks of the ruling coalition is led by Brazil's largest party, the center-right PMDB, which is jockeying for a bigger role in Rousseff's government and more funds for its members' districts in an election year. "The government has neglected the allied parties and their leaders," said PMDB lawmaker Danilo Forte, who proposed calling a party convention to decide whether to end the alliance with Rousseff's leftist Workers' Party (PT). Full Story | Top |
| Preservationists fight to save rare albino redwood tree in California Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 05:35 PM PDT By Laila Kearney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Northern California preservationists are fighting to keep a rare albino redwood, one of just 10 trees of its kind known to exist, from being chopped down to make way for a new commuter rail system, arborists and city officials said on Wednesday. The albino chimera coast redwood, standing 52 feet high in a commercial district of Cotati, a town in California's wine country, also is the tallest and widest specimen of its type, said Tom Stapleton, a certified arborist who is leading a group of researchers and community members pushing to save the tree. The tree is a form of albino redwood with a genetic mutation that causes its branches to be striped, in a candy cane-like pattern, with a mix of green and white needles. Albino redwoods are a mutant variety of the evergreen species known as the California redwood, giant redwood or coast redwood, which is named for the reddish color of its bark and includes the tallest living trees on Earth. Full Story | Top |
| New York's Albany County seeks to limit crude oil processing Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 05:32 PM PDT New York's Albany County issued a moratorium on Wednesday on the expansion of crude oil processing in the Port of Albany, pending a public health investigation. Processing and storing crude oil at the port could pose health risks, said County Executive Daniel McCoy, who estimated that the health review could take "many months." The moratorium targets a proposed expansion at an oil-processing facility operated by Global Partners LP. The company is seeking to build several boilers that would heat crude oil before it is off-loaded and shipped for refining. Global Partners can transport by rail up to 160,000 barrels a day of crude to its Albany terminal, which includes some 50,000 bpd for Phillips 66 in a five-year commitment to ship North Dakotan Bakken crude by rail to its 238,000-bpd Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey. Full Story | Top |
| 'Love hormone' oxytocin may help anorexics fight food fixation Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 05:01 PM PDT By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Oxytocin, a brain chemical known as the "love hormone", is showing promise as a potential treatment for people with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, according to research by British and Korean scientists. In studies of anorexic patients, researchers found oxytocin altered their tendencies to become fixated on images of fattening foods and large body shapes - suggesting it could be developed as a treatment to help them overcome unhealthy obsessions with diet. Anorexia nervosa affects millions of people worldwide - including around 1 in 150 teenage girls in Britain, where it is one of the leading causes of mental health-related deaths, both due to physical complications and suicide. As well as problems with food, eating and body shape, patients with anorexia often have social difficulties, including anxiety and hypersensitivity to negative emotions. Full Story | Top |
| Floating hotel draws workers to NW Canada boom town Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 03:53 PM PDT  By Julie Gordon VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Hundreds of construction workers in booming northern British Columbia will take up residence this week in unique digs on board a cruise ferry revamped into a floating luxury hotel. The aging ship will help relieve a housing shortage in one busy Canadian port town already bursting ahead of a promised energy boom that could last more than a decade. The Silja Festival - a Baltic ferry made over as the Delta Spirit Lodge - will spend at least a year docked outside Kitimat, British Columbia, where it will provide housing for about 600 workers in town for Rio Tinto Alcan's $3.3 billion smelter-upgrade project, which is expected to wrap up in 2015. After that, the ship's owners hope more contracts will float their way as major energy companies like Chevron Corp, Petronas and Royal Dutch Shell push ahead with proposed liquefied natural gas export (LNG) projects along Canada's Pacific coast. Full Story | Top |
| North Korea denies role in tanker loaded with crude at rebel-held Libya port Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 03:47 PM PDT North Korea denied on Thursday any responsibility for an oil tanker that loaded crude from a Libyan rebel-held port and fled the OPEC member state's attempt to seize it, saying the vessel that carried its flag was operated by an Egyptian firm. The incident marked the first sale of Libyan crude bypassing the government and was a huge humiliation for Tripoli as it struggled to rein in armed militias who helped oust dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but want to grab power and oil revenues. Libya's parliament ousted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan on Tuesday after rebels loaded crude on the North Korean-flagged tanker that later fled naval forces amid reports of a gunfight as it sailed off along Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast. North Korea said the tanker violated its laws, and a contract with the Alexandria-based company by carrying contraband cargo, and it had notified Libya and the International Maritime Organization of severing all association with the ship. Full Story | Top |
| Libyan PM flees country after tanker escapes rebel-held port Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 03:47 PM PDT  By Ulf Laessing TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan sought refuge in Europe on Wednesday after parliament voted him out for failing to stop rebels independently exporting oil in a challenge to Libya's fragile unity. According to varying accounts by government officials, the navy or air force then fired on the vessel, although it was not clear if this happened in Libyan or international waters. He said Libya had asked Egypt and other countries to help stop the ship. The debacle underlines the impotence of the authorities in Tripoli, whose fledgling army and police force are no match for the militias and other armed groups who remain a law unto themselves three years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Full Story | Top |
| Agent.BTZ spyware hit Europe hard after U.S. military attack: security firm Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 03:36 PM PDT By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - A mysterious computer virus believed to be from Russia infected hundreds of thousands of PCs around the globe after attacking the U.S. military's Central Command in an unprecedented breach uncovered in 2008, according to the details of new research released on Wednesday. Costin Raiu, director of research at Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, told Reuters on Wednesday that at least 400,000 computers across Russia and Europe were infected with the virus, dubbed Agent.BTZ, based on the number of infections detected by his firm's anti-virus software. Not much data has been previously released on the virus, so the research from Kaspersky Lab may shed new light on how sophisticated cyber espionage operations are conducted. Still, Raiu said Kaspersky published its analysis on the attacks because it believes they are likely linked to a sophisticated ongoing operation known as Turla, which is targeting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States. Full Story | Top |
| Iran says seals gas export deal with Oman Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 03:15 PM PDT  Iran has sealed an agreement to export 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Oman, Iran's state news agency IRNA said on Wednesday, in a deal that also involves building a pipeline across the Gulf at a cost of about $1 billion. The accord, signed during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's first visit to Muscat since his election last year, came out of a memorandum of understanding between the countries in August for the sale of Iranian gas to Oman from 2015, in a 25-year deal valued at around $60 billion. Energy-hungry Oman agreed to buy gas from Iran as far back as 2005 and a later draft deal in 2007 included plans for Oman to process Iranian gas for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Full Story | Top |
| TSX gains as Ukraine fears ease, gold-mining shares jump Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 02:15 PM PDT  By John Tilak TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index advanced on Wednesday as a jump in gold-mining shares and a gain in industrials helped drive the market after concerns about instability in Ukraine appeared to ease with heightened diplomacy. Investors followed developments in Ukraine, with the European Union agreeing to a framework for its first sanctions on Russia since the Cold War and the United States intensifying efforts to negotiate with Russia. At the moment, markets are consolidating," said Youssef Zohny, a portfolio manager at Stenner Investment Partners, a subsidiary of Richardson GMP. "Whenever markets are pretty strong, there's always a risk of a healthy correction." The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index closed up 51.77 points, or 0.36 percent, at 14,319. Full Story | Top |
| Wall Street little changed as Ukraine, China concerns brushed off Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 02:13 PM PDT  By Rodrigo Campos NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks finished little changed on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq up for the first session in five, as investors grappled with the evolving situation in Ukraine but shrugged off concern over weakness in China's economy. The EU agreed a framework for its first sanctions on Russia since the Cold War, a stronger response to the Ukraine crisis than many had expected and a mark of solidarity with Washington in the effort to make Moscow pay for seizing Crimea. London copper prices, a proxy for economic health due to the metal's broad industrial use, hit their lowest since July 2010 on concerns about credit problems in China, but later rebounded. "The situation in Ukraine and a slowing China are going to matter, but they haven't mattered yet. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. House panel investigates EPA's power plant rule setting Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 02:02 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives committee said on Wednesday it is launching an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's decision-making process involving emissions standards for new power plants. Republican leaders of the House Energy and Committee have written to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy requesting documents to determine whether the agency complied with the law when it developed its proposals for new power plant standards, which were announced in late 2013. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Susan Heavey) Full Story | Top |
| A whale of a find: Fossil sheds light on cetacean sonar's origin Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 01:06 PM PDT These marine mammals have been using echolocation - bouncing high-frequency sounds off underwater objects - to find prey for tens of millions of years. U.S. scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of the most ancient whale known to have used echolocation - a creature called Cotylocara macei, a bit larger than a bottlenose dolphin, that lived about 28 million years ago. The discovery suggests that echolocation evolved in toothed whales - the group that includes modern day varieties like sperm whales, killer whales, dolphins and porpoises - perhaps 32 million to 34 million years ago, the scientists said. That was relatively soon after whales, around 35 million years ago, split into two major cetacean groups - toothed whales that were active hunters and toothless baleen whales that were filter feeders, straining food like krill from the ocean. Full Story | Top |
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