Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
Balancing powers in the Malacca Strait
Singapore’s warning of a terrorist threat in the Malacca Straits has again highighted the issue of who is in charge of security in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia have stepped up sea patrols in the strait after Singapore’s navy said on Thursday it had received indications a terrorist group was planning attacks on oil tankers.
A Police Coast Guard vessel patrols shipping lanes near freight ships off the coast of Singapore March 4, 2010. ( REUTERS/Vivek Prakash)
The 900-km long (550 miles) Malacca Strait, linking Europe and the Middle East with the Asia-Pacific, carries about 40 percent of the world’s trade. More than 50,000 merchant ships ply the waterway every year.
About 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of Middle East crude passed through the strait and to Japan last year. Middle East crude accounts for 90 percent of Japan’s total imports. Up to 80 percent of China’s crude imports are delivered via the narrow and congested waterway.
So China and Japan have a stake in keeping the Malacca Strait secure, as does India which has a blue water navy patrolling in the Andaman Sea at the western end of the strait.
The strait is a vital sea lane for the U.S. Navy, which sent warships to Taiwan via the Malacca Strait at a time of heightened tensions between China and Taiwan in 1996.
Cattle Rustling, Pythons and Boogie Angola Style …. the best reads of May
Climate health costs: bug-borne ills, killer heat Tree-munching beetles, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and deer ticks that spread Lyme disease are three living signs that climate change is likely to exact a heavy toll on human health. These pests and others are expanding their ranges in a warming world, which means people who never had to worry about them will have to start.
Spain rearranges furniture as economy sinks
Moving a 17-metre high monument to Christopher Columbus 100 metres down the road is how the Spanish government is interpreting the advice of John Maynard Keynes. The economist once argued it would be preferable to pay workers to dig holes and fill them in again, rather than allowing them to stand idle and deprive the economy of the multiplier effect of their wages.
Picking up the pieces from Afghanistan’s war
U.S. gunners scanned a lush Afghan valley from their helicopter, as a white van containing a badly burned baby inched toward another Black Hawk waiting at the army outpost. Eight soldiers had flown into the heart of hostile eastern Afghanistan, in a convoy of one air ambulance and one “chase” helicopter for protection, to collect 18-month-old Amanullah who knocked a pot of scalding water over his legs, penis and scrotum.
In Brazil, extreme weather stokes climate worries
No one could say they hadn’t seen it coming. The sand dunes had been advancing for decades before they swallowed the houses of families in Ilha Grande, an island in Brazil’s Parnaiba river delta. Standing on a dune that covers his old home, one man describes the landscape of his childhood — cashew trees as far as he could see. Not a dune in sight.
Trying to deconstruct Chinese oil policy
China’s surprise decision late on Thursday to slash subsidies on fuel prices has been welcomed as a sign that Beijing is intent on reducing the pace of oil demand growth in the world’s second biggest energy consumer.
That, in theory, should help contain the upward spiral in world oil prices that took crude to a high of nearly $140 a barrel last week. Nine out of 10 analysts polled by Reuters immediately after the news took that line. But there is a contrarian view.
Previously unprofitable refining companies, obliged to sell at prices set by the state, will now be turning enough profit to fully meet transport fuel demand for the first time in weeks. Rationing and queues will be alleviated. Chinese refiners would then need to buy more crude, not less, from world crude markets.
The timing of the decision was a surprise. While other Asian countries had been easing subsidies, Beijing wasn’t expected to move until after the Olympics was safely out of the way, for fear higher prices might cause unrest.
The early decision may demonstrate Beijing’s confidence that it has social cohesion under control — a result of the positive reaction across the country to the government’s handling of the Sichuan earthquake and the Chinese perception of bias in Western media coverage of unrest in Tibet and the run-up to the Olympics.
The timing of the price increase also shows that Beijing is prepared to engage with other world powers on the global inflationary pressures that are threatening to slow Chinese economic growth.
Major oil producing and consuming countries are meeting in Saudi Arabia this weekend to discuss ways to reverse the rise of crude prices — China’s action on fuel prices ahead of the meeting permits Beijing to claim a leadership role in helping control oil prices.
