BUDD Group has reported that each vessel calling at anchorage at Base Buoy (B9) at Douala Port, Cameroon will now be provided with an armed security team for their protection.

This team will remain onboard the vessel throughout her stay at anchorage and will leave after berthing.

This service will be free and will be conducted for an indefinite period.

Source:Hellenicshippingnews

An Indonesian cargo plane with four people on board lost contact with air traffic control , an official said, the latest incident to hit the country’s poor aviation record.

The Twin Otter DHC6-400, set off from the city of Timika on Wednesday at 10:39 am (0239 GMT) and was headed to Ilaga, a mountainous region in the remote eastern province of Papua and was scheduled to arrive 50 minutes after taking off.

“After 2.5 hours, there has been no information from the nearest airport on the plane’s whereabouts, we decided to announce the plane has lost contact,” local transportation agency head, Yan Purba told Metro TV .

The aircraft was carrying three crew members and one passenger as well as 1.7 tonnes of rice.

Search and rescue have been assembled for the missing plane which was flying in a good weather condition, Purba said.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands, but mountainous Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.

The country has a poor aviation safety record and Papua is a particularly problematic place to fly due to its mountainous terrain and frequent poor weather.

In June, a military helicopter with 12 people on board lost contact just minutes after it took off from a remote Papua district Oksibil, to Sentani, also in Papua.

The remains of the aircraft have not been found to this day.

Earlier in 2016, a cargo plane carrying construction materials crashed in Ilaga, killing all four people on board.

(Source: AFP)

US President Donald Trump has been accused by experts of “hyperbole” for falsely claiming that America has become a net energy exporter and no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East.

Trump started one of his busier twitter days on Monday by sending out several posts about the recent attacks on the world’s largest refinery in Saudi Arabia, which slashed the kingdom’s oil production by about half and caused global oil prices to jump.

He gave himself credit for turning America into “the Number One Energy Producer in the World,” implying that his country was immune to the consequences of the devastating attack on Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco.

“Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World,” he wrote. “We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!”

Source: Presstv

President Donald Trump says he has authorized the release of the US’ “strategic petroleum reserve” in a bid to control the global oil prices, which are already hiking after 10 Yemeni drones attacked Saudi Aramco facilities.

“Based on the attack on Saudi Arabia, which may have an impact on oil prices, I have authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if needed, in a to-be-determined amount sufficient to keep the markets well-supplied,” Trump said in a tweet early Monday.

“I have also informed all appropriate agencies to expedite approvals of the oil pipelines currently in the permitting process in Texas and various other States,” he added.

Russia plans to issue its first yuan-denominated bond as the country is working with China to cut reliance on the US greenback, Russian broadcaster RT reports.

China and Russia are drawing increasingly close amid a changing global landscape marked by President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and his trade war which involves multiple battles with US allies and others alike.

Beijing and Moscow have been planning yuan bonds since 2016, but the plan has been postponed several times. According to RT, Russia now expects to issues its first sovereign debt in the Chinese currency, officially called renminbi, by the end of the year or early next year.

Both countries are concerned about “the dollar hegemony” and see the launch as a stepping stone in their bid to break the dominion up, the network said.

“It’s a step towards de-dollarization,” investment strategist with Premier BCS Anton Bakhtin told RT. “Secondly, it’s an additional bridge between us and the Chinese investors.”

As tensions escalate with the US, world countries are becoming increasingly worried about Washington using global reliance on the dollar as a weapon.

However, it will take much more time to fully shift away from the greenback and countries are looking for additional financial instruments as protection.

Both China and Russia have been stockpiling gold. Since December, the People’s Bank of China has reportedly added about 100 tonnes of gold to its reserves. Russia has bought 106 tonnes of the precious metal this year.

Over the past decade, Russia has more than quadrupled its gold reserves to more than 2,200 tonnes and now owns the fifth-largest stockpile by country. China’s reserves reportedly stand at more than 1,950 tonnes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a special interest in breaking up America’s “exorbitant privilege” in the words of former French President Charles de Gaulle through the dollar hegemony.

In June, Putin urged five major emerging economic powers – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as BRICS – to accelerate developing a system that could replace the dollar.

China, on the other hand, is on a campaign to make the renminbi a global reserve currency and its rising gold reserves could add to world confidence in the currency.

China’s launch of yuan-denominated Shanghai futures in March generated a lot of enthusiasm around the world.

Experts say the new futures contract traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange is now on course to become an alternative international oil benchmark not priced in dollars.

Source: Presstv

Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have agreed to cooperate in the spirit of multilateralism and free trade, with the visiting German leader vowing to expand investments in China, which is its largest trading partner.

The development came as the two leaders met and held discussions in Beijing on Friday, when Xi pointed to the common interests of China and Europe in “safeguarding the basic rules of (a)multilateral trading system” and called for jointly upholding what he referred to as “international fairness and justice,” China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported.

According to the report, Merkel further described Beijing-Berlin dialog and cooperation as extensive and expressed Germany’s satisfaction in sharing China’s achievements on multilateralism and pledged to promote people-to people and cultural exchanges.  

She further shared Xi’s perspective that unilateralism and protectionism also have adverse impact on Germany, insisting that trading partners should work to overcome differences and frictions through dialog and consultation.

The Chinese president then emphasized that as two of the world’s major economic powers with global influences, China and Germany should exhibit responsibility and “jointly uphold international fairness and justice,” the report added.

Xi further called for stronger cooperation between the two nations in emerging fields such as intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence, digitalization and 5G networks as well as new energy vehicles to jointly cultivate and explore future markets.

The report also cited Xi as saying that China is “accelerating the opening of its financial and service sectors” and would welcome Germany’s investment in such sectors, providing Berlin and others with newer opportunities.

Merkel, who is on a two-day tour of China at the invitation of Premier, Li Keqiang, further expressed Germany’s willingness to “play a constructive role in the development of EU-China relations” and to enhance communication and coordination with Beijing in the field of international affairs.

The visit came amid an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing as China on Monday filed a complaint against the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO) after the Trump administration imposed new tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports.

China’s Commerce Ministry declared in a statement that Beijing would defend its legal rights in accordance with the rules of the international body that limit the tariffs each country is allowed to charge.

The announcement came one day after the US began imposing 15-percent tariffs on a variety of Chinese products. In a retaliatory move, China also began imposing new duties on US crude oil.

This is while China’s Commerce Ministry further announced in a Thursday statement that trade negotiations aimed at ending a protracted tariff war with Washington are scheduled to resume in the US capital next month.

According to the statement, American and Chinese trade negotiators had earlier in the day held a phone conversation and agreed to meet “in early October” for another round of talks.

China’s Vice Premier Liu was further cited as saying that he spoke with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the phone and both parties agreed to hold what will be the thirteenth round of high-level economic talks in Washington at the beginning of next month.

The last round of the US-China trade negotiations was held in Shanghai in July, which was hailed as “constructive” but ended with no announcements.

Over the past year, the world’s two largest economies have been involved in a tense trade war, which escalated further on September 1 when both sides started implementing fresh levies on each other’s products.

Source: Presstv