Iramb Zusha

TORONTO/LONDON: Barrick Gold Corp (ABX.TO), soon to become the world’s largest bullion miner, is interested in adding more copper assets as long as the red metal is accompanied by bullion, executives said on Friday. Barrick, which expects to complete its $6.1 billion takeover of Randgold Resources (RRS.L) Jan. 1, outlined plans for exploration, expansion, streamlining and asset sales at an investor presentation in London. Structured under regions in North America, South America and Africa and the Middle East, Barrick spent the last four days focusing on where to take the merged company, said Randgold Chief Executive Officer Mark Bristow, who will be Barrick’s new CEO. Barrick is open to copper assets “as long as that copper is a component or co-product to the gold,” said Rod Quick, who heads Randgold’s projects and evaluation and will do the same in the merged company. “Or, unless that copper project will enhance our strategic partner network.” In Africa, Barrick is open to exploiting ...

ROGUN: Tajikistan on Friday inaugurated a $3.9 billion hydro-electric power plant, a mega project that will enable the impoverished country to eliminate domestic energy shortages and export electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Built on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan, the plant championed by President Emomali Rakhmon is expected to reach a height of 335 metres (1,099 feet) in a decade, becoming the world’s tallest hydro-electric dam. The first of six turbines in the Rogun hydroelectric dam goes online on Friday, with the power plant expected to reach capacity of 3,600 megawatts — the equivalent of three nuclear power plants — when completed. At present, Rogun still resembles a vast construction site, with rocky earth covering the territory from which the powerful Vakhsh flowing through the Pamir mountains was diverted. In 2016, Rakhmon, who is a former collective farm boss, climbed into a bulldozer at a groundbreaking for the dam, in a sign of the president’s personal attac...

NEW DELHI: Three eight-month-old tiger cubs have been killed by a train in western India, forest rangers said Friday. “The cubs were hit by a train early on Thursday and their mangled remains were recovered and sent for post-mortem,” A.K. Mishra from Maharashtra state’s forestry department told AFP. Their bodies were spotted in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, which is famous for a thriving tiger population. “The incident is extremely unusual and we have not spotted their mother yet and will cremate them soon,” Mishra said. India has launched a major campaign to boost tiger numbers. At the last tiger census in 2014 the population had risen to more than 2,200 from a low of less than 1,500. But as urban areas have expanded in the country of 1.25 billion people, conflict between humans and tigers has worsened. Poaching is also a concern. A controversy is meanwhile raging about the death in early November of a tiger believed to have killed more than a dozen villagers, also in Maharashtra...

LONDON: Some lawmakers in Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party have said they have submitted letters of no confidence in the British leader. A leadership challenge is triggered if 48 Conservatives write such letters to the chairman of the party’s so-called 1922 committee, Graham Brady. May could be toppled if 158 of her 315 lawmakers vote against her. Brady has not said how many letters have been submitted. It is not clear how he would announce any vote. Lawmakers do not have to reveal publicly whether they have written a letter, but those below have chosen to do so: 1) JACOB REES-MOGG – submitted his letter on Thursday “It is of considerable importance that politicians stick to their commitments or do not make such commitments in the first place. Regrettably, this is not the situation,” he said in his letter. 2) HENRY SMITH – tweeted a picture of his letter on Thursday 3) SHERYLL MURRAY – said on Thursday she had submitted a letter. 4) ANNE MARIE-MORRIS – said on Thursday s...

WASHINGTON: The White House agreed Friday to allow CNN reporter Jim Acosta back in after a judge ruled that the star journalist was improperly banned following a testy exchange at a press conference with President Donald Trump.  Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said “in response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter’s hard pass.” But she left open the possibility of seeking to remove Acosta’s access later and said new rules would be imposed “to ensure fair and orderly press conferences.” Trump said that “rules and regulations” were being drafted to govern such gatherings, where the president or his representatives often accuse journalists — Acosta in particular — of being overly hostile. “We have to practice decorum. We want total freedom of the press,” Trump told reporters, adding later in an interview with Fox News: “If he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out.” In fact, Trump himself frequently speaks harshly to reporters, for example last week telling another CNN co...

PORT MORESBY: The United States will not back down from its trade dispute with China, and might even double its tariffs, unless Beijing bows to U.S. demands, Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday. In a bluntly worded speech at an Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea, Pence threw down the gauntlet to China on trade and security in the region. “We have taken decisive action to address our imbalance with China,” Pence declared. “We put tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods, and we could more than double that number.” “The United States, though, will not change course until China changes its ways.” The stark warning will likely be unwelcome news to financial markets which had hoped for a thaw in the Sino-U.S. dispute and perhaps even some sort of deal at a G20 meeting later this month in Argentina. President Donald Trump, who is not attending the APEC meeting, is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina. Pence’s warning on Saturday contr...

WASHINGTON: The Central Investigation Agency (CIA) believes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, complicating President Donald Trump’s efforts to preserve ties with a key U.S. ally. The sources said the CIA had briefed other parts of the US government, including Congress, on its assessment, which contradicts Saudi government assertions that Prince Mohammed was not involved. The CIA’s finding, first reported by the Washington Post, is the most definitive U.S. assessment to date tying Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler directly to the killing. Both the White House and the State Department declined to comment. “The claims in this purported assessment is false,” a spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said in a statement. “We have and continue to hear various theories without seeing the primary basis for these speculations.” Trump and top officials of his administration ha...

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he had not yet been briefed on the CIA’s conclusions regarding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but that he would speak with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the CIA about the issue later on Saturday. The CIA believes Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de-facto ruler, ordered Khashoggi’s killing, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. But Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House before flying to California, also reiterated that he had been told the crown prince had not played a role in the journalist’s death. “We haven’t been briefed yet,” Trump said. “We will be talking with the CIA later and lots of others. I’ll be doing that while I’m on the plane. I’ll be speaking also with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.” Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was killed in October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul when he went there to pick up documents he needed for his planned marriage. T...

BANGUI: More than 40 people were killed and dozens wounded in Central African Republic in an attack on a Catholic mission sheltering 20,000 refugees, a regional lawmaker said. The attack happened on Thursday in Alindao, a town 300 km (200 miles) east of the capital Bangui. Thousands of people were forced to flee when the mission was set on fire, the United Nations said.  “We have counted 42 bodies so far, but we are still searching for others. The camp has been burnt to the ground and people fled into the bush and to other IDP (internally displaced person) camps in the city,” Alindao lawmaker Etienne Godenaha told Reuters. A humanitarian source confirmed that more than 40 people were killed. U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Central African Republic Najat Rochdi said in a statement: “This vicious cycle of repeated attacks against civilians is unacceptable.” Read More: Eleven taxi drivers shot dead in South Africa Thousands have died and a fifth of Central African Republic’s 4.5 mill...

WASHINGTON: US authorities seized about 18.5 tons of cocaine with a street value of $500 million (389.50 million pounds) in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Friday. The cocaine was taken off the Coast Guard cutter James in the Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday after it was confiscated from 15 drug smuggling vessels in the international waters, the Coast Guard said. Multiple U.S. Coast Guard cutters helped seize the drugs of Mexico, Central and South America, it said. Some 49 suspects were also arrested and will be prosecuted in southern Florida, the Miami Herald reported. Cocaine remains one of the most popular illegal drugs in the United States, where most of the world’s cocaine is consumed, according to federal officials. “There are troubling early signs that cocaine use and availability is on the rise in the United States for the first time in nearly a decade,” the U.S. State Department said in a global narcotics trade report in 2017. Potential gl...

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May says she sees no alternative to the Brexit deal she presented earlier this week, amid reports that some of her senior ministers want her to renegotiate the draft agreement before meeting EU leaders next weekend. “There is no alternative plan on the table. There is no different approach that we could agree with the EU,” May wrote in an article for the Sun on Sunday newspaper. “If MPs (legislators) reject the deal, they will simply take us back to square one. It would mean more division, more uncertainty and a failure to deliver on the vote of the British people,” she added. Just hours after announcing on Wednesday that her senior ministers had collectively backed her divorce deal, May was thrust into her premiership’s most perilous crisis when Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resigned on Thursday to oppose the agreement. Other mutinous lawmakers in her party have openly spoken of ousting her and said the Brexit deal would not pass parliament. Brex...