Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2013 14:07 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Three people dead from a 6.3 doesn't say much for Iranian building codes
Casualties resulting from relatively small earthquakes is a long-standing tradition in Iran, especially in the smaller cities and towns. Something they share with Pakistan.
And yes - it's due to a lack of building codes (and no small amount of pay-off if building codes do exist.)
#12
It seems they got the Evil Zionist Earthquake Machine operating after they bought off of Halliburton (why couldn't they of been called HalleyBerry)
#13
in that part of the world (and in other parts as well) a lot of people build stuff on their own using adobe mixed with cement, misc. masonry and whatever sheet metal they can find
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/09/2013 18:14 Comments ||
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The latest on Egypt's spiral down into economic melt-down.
[Ahram] Officials hope increases in household electricity prices will take some pressure off national power grid this summer, amid mounting concerns over Egypt's ability to import enough fuel to meet energy needs
Egypt is expected to experience numerous power cuts this summer due to ongoing shortages of fuel, including natural gas and the low-quality diesel fuel mazut.
Over recent weeks, several news reports have claimed that Egyptians might see blackouts twice a day due to a Ministry of Electricity plan to conserve electricity during the hottest months from May to August.
Hoping for a mild summer
Speaking to Ahram Online, Hafez El-Salmawi, head of the Egyptian Electric Utility and Consumer Protection Regulatory Agency, said that the coming summer might not be as bad as expected, and may even be better than last year in terms of electricity service.
He said that Egyptian households might not suffer frequent power outages, as the government had raised household electricity prices to reduce consumption.
"Egyptians will try to save electricity to avoid paying higher bills, especially after prices were raised for the first time since 2008," El-Salmawi said.
Egypt's government has recently moved to reduce subsidies on electricity and natural gas, which account for as much as 5 percent of the country's total LE145 billion subsidy bill.
Prices for consumers increase with consumption, with tariffs on monthly consumption of up to 200 kilowatts per hour increasing by 4.4 percent to LE0.12. Taking into account a previous increase, prices have risen by ten percent since November of last year.
The other two highest consumption categories saw an increase of more than 17 percent each.
El-Salmawi said that electricity consumption during the summer was expected to rise to 29,500 megawatts per day, exacerbated by the hot weather and the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in July. Egypt's daily capacity for generating electricity currently stands at around 27,000 megawatts.
"The national electricity grid will be overloaded by around 2,500 megawatts on rush days and on days that see heat waves, which should be dealt with through household conservation," El-Salmawi stated. "Otherwise, the government will have to cut power during these overloaded days in some areas."
El-Salmawi said that, if every consumer turned off one 40-watt light bulb, for example, about 1,500 megawatts could be saved.
Over the last ten years, electricity consumption has jumped by 29.5 percent, according to official data, with prices largely static until the recent hikes.
Fuel shortage concerns
"There are 220 power units generating electricity nationwide and consuming roughly 90 million cubic metres of fuel," said electricity ministry spokesperson Aktham Abu El-Ela.
Abu El-Ela explained that power stations consume either natural gas or low-quality diesel fuel. With Egypt's current fuel shortage, he added, a number of power plants have seen their supplies disrupted, shrinking their capacity and leading to repeated power failures in some areas.
Egypt is completely dependent on fossil fuels for producing electricity, with a mere ten percent of the country's total generated electricity coming from wind turbines and hydroelectric plants, such as the Aswan High Dam, Naga Hammadi's barrages and the Aswan reservoir.
While the 2,500 megawatts represent an overload on the electricity grid, the power-generating gap is likely to be larger depending on the availability of fuel.
Electricity Minister Ahmed Emam said on Sunday that the country's power-generating gap during the summer would be revealed by the end of the current month, after the amounts of fuel to be supplied by the petroleum ministry are announced.
"The problem is related to the Ministry of Petroleum, which should save fuel quantities for electricity power plants," Abu El-Ela said.
El-Salmaw, for his part, asserted: "The cash-strapped government faces trouble obtaining fuel imports. Also, the Ministry of Petroleum owes foreign oil companies around $6 billion, which have halted a part of the oil supply until the ministry pays up."
Electricity troubles are not new to Egypt, but the problem has been exacerbated in recent years.
Under the former regime, Egypt's government had enough foreign currency liquidity to pay for fuel imports, and it had the trust of suppliers due to its sizable net international reserves (NIR), Mohamed Abu Basha, an economist at Egypt's largest investment bank EFG-Hermes, told Ahram Online.
"The current situation is different; the government faces a vast shortfall in foreign currency, along with its haemorrhaging NIR and political turmoil, so a negative impact on fuel imports is expected," Abu Basha commented.
Around 60 percent of domestic natural gas consumption was allotted to electricity generation, compared to only 56 percent in 2011.
Egypt produced 45.8 million tonnes of natural gas in 2012, a 0.85 percent drop from the previous year's 46.1 million tonnes, the state-run Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC) has reported. Egypt is signatory to a number of gas-export agreements, and production has not yet reached the levels required to meet domestic consumption needs as well.
In March, Iraq announced plans to sell 4 million barrels of crude oil to Egypt beginning in April.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/09/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#1
Ain't no cure for the summertime blues.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/09/2013 0:26 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Officials hope increases in household electricity prices will take some pressure off national power grid this summer
So they are 'fixing' infrastructure problems by making electricity unaffordable. Tune in next week when they fix the food shortages with massive famine.
Someone should give Morsi a copy of SimCity for Christmas so he can practice.
#5
"If nobody can afford electricity, there'll be no shortages. Quota met."
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2013 14:08 Comments ||
Top||
#6
They're seriously trying this in the UK. The higher the price, the lower the demand, the more power plants they can close, which will lower the supply and raise the prices (loop while N < infinity).
[Ahram] Egyptian opinion poll sees record low in presidential job performance approval rating, yet not all citizens know who the opposition is nor who they would want to replace Morsi
Egyptians show increasing dissatisfaction with President Mohamed Morsi, with his approval rating hitting a record low of 47 percent, according to the latest public opinion poll conducted by The Egyptian Centre for Public Opinion Research (Baseera).
This approval rating is even lower than the approval at the end of Morsi's first eight months in office, which was 49 percent and way behind the 78 percent approval he earned after the first 100 days.
Baseera not only polls citizens on approval, but also on disapproval.
In this one - nine months after Morsi was sworn into office - the percentage of those who disapprove of his performance rose to 45 percent, compared to 43 percent at the end of his first eight months in office, and shot up after only 15 percent disapproved of Morsi after his first 100 days in presidency.
The poll, which was conducted in late March, shows that Morsi's job approval rate declines significantly among respondents with a university degree or post-graduate degree, of whom 39 percent see his performance as positive, compared to 51 percent among respondents with a secondary (high school) degree or less.
Only 37 percent of respondents who would vote for Morsi if presidential elections were to be held tomorrow are down from a significant 58 percent after the first 100 days. Two-thirds of respondents were unable to name an alternative, however.
Eight percent of the respondents favoured Ahmed Shafiq, the former presidential candidate and the ousted president's last prime minister, while only 3 percent said that they favoured a military man, whether it be Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi or any other. All other popular figures received less support in the poll.
On Egyptian's political awareness
A third of those polled never heard of the National Salvation Front (NSF), the country's main opposition coalition, according to the poll.
This percentage was almost the same in last month's opinion poll and from among those only 30 percent said they support it, compared to 35 percent in last month's poll.
Forty-nine percent said they perceived the NSF performance negatively, compared to 42 percent last month.
Furthermore, 39 percent of Egyptians never heard of the appeal court's decision on 27 March to reinstate Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, the prosecutor-general that was edged out by a unilateral constitutional decree on the part of Islamist President Morsi.
The decision also annulled the appointment by Morsi of current Prosecutor-General Talaat Abdullah. Forty-one percent of respondents see that the best solution is for the Supreme Judicial Council, Egypt's highest judicial authority, to nominate three candidates for Morsi to choose from for the prosecutor-general position, as the constitution dictates.
Eighteen percent, however, see that the solution is to enable Mahmoud to return to his post. Only 14 percent favour the current chief prosecutor to stay put in his post. The remaining respondents couldn't come up with a solution for the problem.
The poll was conducted through telephone interviews among 2,202 respondents ages 18+ on 27 and 28 March 2013. The response rate was approximately 73 percent and error margin below 3 percent. Income brackets were determined based on ownership of durable goods.
That is to say, the interviewer looked around to see what kind of stuff the subject had on display.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/09/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Muslim Brotherhood
#1
Yet another thing they share in common, Morsi and Champ.
PODGORICA, Montenegro -- Both the incumbent and the opposition candidate claimed victory in Montenegro's presidential election Sunday, fueling political tensions in the small Balkan country which is striving for European Union membership. State election authorities had yet to release any official results in the race for the largely ceremonial post.
President Filip Vujanovic, from the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, said that based on his camp's own, full count of the votes, he had won 51.3 percent of ballots, while opponent Miodrag Lekic won 48.7 percent.
"I want to inform the public that I have achieved a victory," Vujanovic announced. "I would like to thank the citizens of Montenegro."
Lekic's camp, however, said it had counted 97 percent of the ballots and that their candidate had won 50.5 percent of the votes, compared to 49.5 for Vujanovic. The opposition said it expected the result to remain the same until the end of the counting process. Lekic described his opponent's declaration of victory as "resembling an attempted coup d'etat."
"The citizens of Montenegro have trusted me to become the president," Lekic said. "I urge the other side to act in a serious and responsible manner. We will demand that each ballot be counted."
A contested vote could raise political instability in Montenegro, which opened European Union accession talks last year and needs to move ahead with the necessary reform process.
The presidency, which comes with a five-year term, does not have much power, but the tight result in the election still deals a blow to Montenegro's governing coalition, which has ruled the country virtually unchallenged for more than two decades.
Vujanovic is after his second presidential term since Montenegro became independent in 2006. He is an ally of Montenegro's powerful prime minister Milo Djukanovic and a strong advocate of Montenegro's integration into the EU as well as NATO.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
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Serbia rejected a European Union-brokered deal for reconciliation with its former province of Kosovo on Monday a defiant move that could jeopardise its EU membership aspirations and fuel tensions in the Balkans. The EU had given Serbia until Tuesday to say whether it would relinquish its effective control over the northern region in exchange for the start of EU membership negotiations.
Serbs might want to rethink being in the EU. Definitely want to rethink joining the Euro...
Even before the government rejection, Aleksandar Vucic, the deputy prime minister and Serbia's most powerful governing party leader, said the plan was unacceptable because it did not give more autonomy to minority ethnic Serbs in Kosovo who, together with Serbia, reject Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.
"The Serbian government cannot accept the proposed principles ... because they do not guarantee full security, survival and protection of human rights for the Serbs in Kosovo," said Ivica Dacic, the prime minister. "Such an agreement could not be implemented and would not lead to a lasting and sustainable solution."
Catherine Ashton, the EU's top diplomat, said after the eighth round of talks
...rousting herself from her daytime job of food and drink...
between Serbian and Kosovan officials last week in Brussels that she wanted a response from both sides and that the bloc's mediation was over. Despite warnings that there will be no more EU-sponsored negotiations under Ashton's mediation, Vucic and the government called for more talks with rival ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
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#1
Russia has a convoy of humanitarian aid stuck at the border. I read somewhere yesterday we are sending money as well and other assistance.
[AnNahar] Scuffles broke out between police and demonstrators outside a prison complex in Turkey Monday where nearly 10,000 people protested the mass trial of 275 people accused of scheming to topple the elected Turkish government.
An Agence La Belle France Presse photographer saw protesters trying to breach the security barricade outside the compound in Silivri, a suburb on the outskirts of Istanbul.
The protest was called by opposition groups and political parties as an Istanbul court prepares to hear the closing arguments in the four-year-long trial of the defendants who stand accused of having ties to an ultranationalist "terrorist network" known as Ergenekon.
A vast array of top military figures, lawyers, academics and journalists are accused of instigating an uprising against the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, in power since 2002.
If convicted, they face sentences ranging from seven and a half years in prison to life.
Prosecutors last month sought life jail terms for the 64 top suspects, who include former army chief Ilker Basbug and nine other active and former generals, accused of "attempting to overthrow the Turkish government by force".
A final verdict is not expected before a few weeks.
The trial is one of several cases brought by the AKP against the once omnipotent army which has been responsible for four coups in half a century.
In a separate case last year, dubbed the "Sledgehammer" trial after a military exercise, Turkey tossed in the slammer Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! three former generals for 20 years each and handed prison terms to dozens of officers.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
