5/03/2012

News Round Up - DEA, Dubai and Delta

Posted by Andrew |

  • The DEA apologized Wednesday to a college student who was picked up during a drug raid last month and then left in a windowless holding cell for four days without access to food or water.

  • The shipbuilding arm of Dubai World has announced plans to build a series of underwater hotels in the emirate. In a statement released on Wednesday, Drydocks World said it has signed an agreement with a Swiss contractor to develop the World Discus Hotel, which is partly submerged under the sea.

  • Clashes erupted on Wednesday between assailants and mostly Islamist protesters gathered outside the Defense Ministry in the Egyptian capital, leaving nine people dead and nearly 50 wounded, security officials said.

  • Delta Air Lines is buying a refinery in a novel — and some say risky — attempt to slice $300 million a year from its escalating jet fuel bill. The Atlanta airline said Monday that is buying the Trainer, Pennsylvania refinery near Philadelphia for $150 million from Phillips 66, a refining company being spun off from ConocoPhillips. The refinery has struggled to make money, and ConocoPhillips planned to shut it down if it couldn’t find a buyer.

  • The body of Libya's former Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem has been found in the River Danube in Vienna, Austrian police say. A spokesman said there were no signs of violence to his body. The former prime minister, 69, worked as a consultant for a Vienna-based company. He apparently left his home early on Sunday, police said.

  • Centrica, the owner of British Gas, was prepared to give Qatar a stake in its business and a board seat in return for a 20-year gas supply deal worth up to £30bn, documents seen by the Financial Times reveal. In a sign of the challenges utilities face as they seek to lock in liquefied natural gas supplies amid strong demand from Asia and dwindling North Sea resources, the papers show Centrica spent more than two and a half years trying to seal a long-term deal with state-owned Qatargas.

  • Saudi Arabia has decided to recall its ambassador to Cairo and close its diplomatic missions in Egypt after protests  outside its embassy over an arrested Egyptian lawyer, state news agency SPA reported. An official spokesman, quoted by SPA, said on Saturday that the measures were decided in response to demonstrations outside its missions in Egypt and threats following the announcement of the arrest of the Egyptian lawyer in Saudi Arabia.

  • As a friend planned her upcoming Portuguese vacation, I quietly encouraged (OK, tirelessly browbeat) her into taking a side trip from Lisbon to Porto. "I'd only have time to get off at the train station, turn around, and come back," she protested. "That's reason enough to go," I told her.

  • Opposition lawmakers in Ukraine are suggesting that President Viktor Yanukovych's government may be behind a series of blasts in an eastern city that injured at least 27 people. Four blasts within minutes Friday rocked the center of the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk in what prosecutors believed was a terrorist attack. Nine children are among the injured.

  • Chief of Staff Lt Gen Benny Gantz made the statement in an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. He said Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had not yet made the final decision whether to build a nuclear bomb.

  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has suggested that time is running out for Western sanctions on Iran to have a meaningful effect on Tehran's nuclear program. The sanctions "are certainly taking a bite out of the Iranian economy," Netanyahu said in an interview broadcast Tuesday on CNN's "OutFront." But "they haven't rolled back the Iranian program -- or even stopped it -- by one iota," he added.

  • A court found Egypt’s most popular comic actor guilty on Tuesday of insulting Islam in roles in films mocking religious hypocrisy, alarming liberal-minded artists and intellectuals already anxious about the growing power of Islamists here after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

  • The Grand Mosque in Kuwait will not be demolished, despite the appearance of cracks in the building due to land sliding deep under certain parts of the structure. In a report by the Kuwait Times, a local researcher said the mosque was unlikely to collapse and did not need to be torn down.

  • "60 Minutes" decided to pull back the curtain on a charged confrontation it had with the government of Israel over a story it reported about Arab Christians in the country.

  • Israeli has legalized the status of three settlement outposts in the West Bank, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

  • After years focusing on tactical considerations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is now looking to bolster its espionage work outside the battlefield. The new Defense Clandestine Service will work closely with the CIA to gather intelligence on targets like Iran.

  • It turns out calling Democratic lawmakers "Communists" has some consequences. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) was supposed to be the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for his district chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) this past Saturday. But days before the event, the group canceled the gathering and asked West not to come back when they rescheduled. Why?

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