No more oil for you says Iran, if Western sanctions against it get any harsher. Iran said today it would stop all oil exports and fall back on its Plan B to survive without oil revenues. Well looks like the U.S. government’s Plan is working. The US is deliberately blocking Iran’s oil exports because it estimates that crude sales make up about half of Iran’s revenues and that oil and oil products make up nearly 80 percent of the country’s total exports. Recently the rial dropped by about a third against the U.S. dollar, reflecting a slide in oil income caused by tightened sanctions to pressure Tehran to drop its nuclear program. How long Iran could function without selling any oil is unclear, but the country does have large currency reserves accumulated over decades, as one of the world’s largest oil suppliers. Let’s just hope the US doesn’t have to implement its Plan B.
A new government has been elected in Russia – well at least in the viral sense. Voters opposed to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have chosen a new opposition leadership, to fight for election reform. Some 81,801 voters took part in the internet poll, and it is not a big surprise that popular anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, won the most votes in the three-day online poll. More than 200 candidates were contending for the 45 on the anti Putin Coordinating Committee. Novelist and columnist Dmitry Bykov came second in the vote, ahead of opposition leader and former chess champion Garry Kasparov. It was later confirmed, that the election severs were under cyber attack and again not surprisingly the Kremlin has said it will ignore the opposition vote, and is planning to arrest everyone on charges of inciting mass disorder. Wow.
A huge blow has been dealt to scientists in Italy. Six scientists and an ex-official were convicted of multiple manslaughter for giving a falsely reassuring statement. The convicted are members of Italy’s National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Serious Risks, and were accused of having provided “inaccurate, incomplete and contradictory” information about the danger of the tremors, felt in L’Aquila, leading up to the 6.3 magnitude earth quake on April 6th 2009, that killed 309 people and left the city in ruins. At a meeting a few days before the deadly quake, they had told officials in L’Aquila that, while a major earthquake was not impossible, it was not likely. Unfortunately many people listened and remained in their homes after the tremors, many of who lost their lives subsequently. The prestigious science journal, Nature, said “the verdict is perverse and the sentence ludicrous”. It called for protests against the sentence’s severity and at scientists being criminalised “for the way their opinions were communicated”. What do you guys out there think? Is the sentence fair? Post your comments.
No more oil for you says Iran, if Western sanctions against it get any harsher. Iran said today it would stop all oil exports and fall back on its Plan B to survive without oil revenues. Well looks like the U.S. government’s Plan is working. The US is deliberately blocking Iran’s oil exports because it estimates that crude sales make up about half of Iran’s revenues and that oil and oil products make up nearly 80 percent of the country’s total exports. Recently the rial dropped by about a third against the U.S. dollar, reflecting a slide in oil income caused by tightened sanctions to pressure Tehran to drop its nuclear program. How long Iran could function without selling any oil is unclear, but the country does have large currency reserves accumulated over decades, as one of the world’s largest oil suppliers. Let’s just hope the US doesn’t have to implement its Plan B.
A new government has been elected in Russia – well at least in the viral sense. Voters opposed to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have chosen a new opposition leadership, to fight for election reform. Some 81,801 voters took part in the internet poll, and it is not a big surprise that popular anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, won the most votes in the three-day online poll. More than 200 candidates were contending for the 45 on the anti Putin Coordinating Committee. Novelist and columnist Dmitry Bykov came second in the vote, ahead of opposition leader and former chess champion Garry Kasparov. It was later confirmed, that the election severs were under cyber attack and again not surprisingly the Kremlin has said it will ignore the opposition vote, and is planning to arrest everyone on charges of inciting mass disorder. Wow.
A huge blow has been dealt to scientists in Italy. Six scientists and an ex-official were convicted of multiple manslaughter for giving a falsely reassuring statement. The convicted are members of Italy’s National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Serious Risks, and were accused of having provided “inaccurate, incomplete and contradictory” information about the danger of the tremors, felt in L’Aquila, leading up to the 6.3 magnitude earth quake on April 6th 2009, that killed 309 people and left the city in ruins. At a meeting a few days before the deadly quake, they had told officials in L’Aquila that, while a major earthquake was not impossible, it was not likely. Unfortunately many people listened and remained in their homes after the tremors, many of who lost their lives subsequently. The prestigious science journal, Nature, said “the verdict is perverse and the sentence ludicrous”. It called for protests against the sentence’s severity and at scientists being criminalised “for the way their opinions were communicated”. What do you guys out there think? Is the sentence fair? Post your comments.