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World News
TURKS AND CAICOS WEEKLY NEWS
May 24 - 30, 2014
Russia signs 30-year gas deal with China RUSSIA’S President Vladimir Putin has signed a multi-billion dollar, 30year gas deal with China. The deal between Russia’s Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has been 10 years in the making. Russia has been keen to find an alternative energy market for its gas as it faces the possibility of European sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine. No official price has been given but it is estimated to be worth over $400bn. President Putin said in a statement to the Russian news channel Rossiya: “The price is satisfactory for both sides. “It is tied, like it is envisaged in all our international contracts with Western partners, specifically our partners in Western Europe, to the market price on oil and oil products. It is an absolutely calibrated, general formula for pricing.” Gazprom shares rose 2% on the news. The agreement, signed at a summit in Shanghai, is expected to deliver some 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year eastward to China’s burgeoning economy, starting around 2018. The main argument has been over price and China is thought to have
A knife-wielding attacker on a rampage at a Chinese primary school in Macheng wounded eight schoolchildren.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller (centre) and CNPC Chairman Zhou Jiping shake hands as Russian President Putin looks on during the signing ceremony in Shanghai.
been driving a hard bargain. Over the last 10 years it has found other gas suppliers. Turkmenistan is now China’s largest foreign gas supplier, and last year it started importing piped natural gas from Myanmar. Alexei Miller, Chief Executive of Gazprom said the new deal was “the biggest contract in the entire history of the USSR and Gazprom - over 1 trillion cubic metres of gas will be supplied during a whole contractual period.” Rain Newton-Smith, head
of emerging markets at Oxford Economics, said: “The whole tenet of the deal has a symbolic value - it says that the two countries are prepared to work with one another. For instance there were other elements such as Chinese participation in Russian transport infrastructure and power generation. “It is similar in many ways to China’s investments in Africa where they drive a hard bargain over the price of raw materials but then provide infrastructure for the economies they are doing business with.
Chinese man attacks playground, injuries eight with meat cleaver A MAN armed with a meat cleaver rushed onto a playground and slashed eight children during a manic attack at a Chinese elementary school. Horrifying photos of the frenzied chase at the Macheng school showed the man wielding the knife above his head as he lunged at one child. No one was killed during the rampage, but eight students — believed to be between 6 and 8 years old — were taken to a local hospital, the London Evening Standard reported. One of the students was seriously injured.
Chinese police arrested the suspect, 35-year-old Chen Zuihang, at the scene, the South China Morning Post reported. Police have not determined a motive. One of the children was seriously hurt, police said. The shocking attack isn’t the first of its kind in China. In 2010, seven students and two teachers were killed during another meat cleaver attack at a school near Hanzhong City. In 2012, another 22 schoolchildren were stabbed at a Chengping school. (NYdailynews)
Chicago mum broke 3-year-old Bosnian president calls floods ‘the worst daughter’s bones while beating thing’ country has faced since war her to death: prosecutors THE devastating floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina – and throughout the Balkans – are “the worst thing” the country has faced since its deadly civil war two decade ago, President Bakir Izetbegovic told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. The cost of the damage will be measure in billions of euros, he told Amanpour. “Hundreds of square kilometers [are] under water; in some parts, in some cities, in some villages in Northern Bosnia there is two or three meters of water,” he said. “So the rivers are out and now it looks like lakes.” The flooding has already killed at least two dozen people in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Massive swaths of Croatia are also submerged. Along with the damage and death caused by floods, many are also concerned about the deadly minefields left in place from the war. “In this moment, there is still water, and still we cannot exactly say what happened with minefields,” President Izetbegovic said. “But for sure they will be displaced. Also the warning marks are removed.”
The flooding has already killed at least two dozen people in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Much of the system of warning signs that kept the country in perilous equilibrium with the mines has also been destroyed. “People…do not think about the mines in this moment. Later, that problem will appear for sure.” Izetbegovic praised the armed forces’ efforts to rescue the stranded, and said more than 3,000 had been airlifted by helicopter. More than 30,000 people have been displaced,
he told Amanpour. Bosnia’s neighbor, Serbia, has also been affected by the floods; the tensions between the countries have remained high since the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s. “In this moment, everybody is helping each other, especially on this level of common people,” Izetbegovic said. Croats are helping Bosniacs, Bosniacs are helping Serbs, he said. (CNN)
A CHICAGO mum beat her 3-yearold daughter to death so badly that the girl’s blood splattered all over her teddy bear and bedding — then the woman called 911 to claim two burglars had done it, prosecutors say. The “horrific allegations” include an autopsy that turned up “possible fractures to several bones” along with missing teeth and bruising all over little Ashley’s broken body, prosecutors said in court Tuesday according to a Chicago Tribune report. Maria Espinoza-Perez, 24, was ordered held without bail and has remained in custody since her arrest Sunday night. The woman called her boyfriend around 8 p.m. that night to tell him about the fabricated breakin and to say Ashley had stopped breathing. Espinoza-Perez then called 911 about 20 minutes later and reported that two men had broken in, hurt the girl and taken off, according to the Tribune. But the allegedly twisted mom later recanted the tale, telling cops she’d been abusing the girl for years and that she’d cleaned up some blood after the attack and had caused some
The young child’s autopsy turned up “possible fractures to several bones” along with missing teeth and bruising all over her little body.
of the injuries. Paramedics who found the girl dead in the kitchen noted scrapes and cuts on the girl’s neck, obvious injuries to her forehead and other places, according to the Tribune. Blood was found in the bathroom and on the girl’s teddy bear, blanket, mattress and on the frame of her crib. A bloody diaper and tissue were found in the trash.