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Russia squeezes out Saudi Arabia in race for Asia's oil market share

port
© Reuters
Saudi Arabia is struggling in its key economic and geopolitical ambition to position itself as the key substitute in Asia in general and China in particular for lost Iranian barrels due to re-imposed sanctions by the US.

The opportunity is huge as, a senior source who works closely with Iran's Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com last week, Iran as of last week was exporting just 266,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil compared to the 2.5 million bpd exported just before the US withdrew from the nuclear deal last May. Although some of the headline figures appear to offer some scope for Saudi optimism, a look beneath the surface shows the situation is far from rosy, with threats from both US and Russian supplies. Indeed, with the recent scare over contaminated barrels now apparently behind it, Russia is also ramping up its threat against increased US supplies as well, signalling a broader burgeoning relationship with the Asian powerhouse of China.

Attention

100mn+ people's data exposed in Capital One bank hack, thousands of SSNs & accounts leaked

capital one logo
© Reuters / Brendan McDermid
Over 100 million Capital One customers have had their personal data hacked in a massive breach that exposed social security numbers, linked bank accounts, birth dates, phone numbers, and even transaction histories.

Personally-identifying information from the credit card applications of about 100 million Americans and 6 million Canadians has been stolen in one of the largest-ever bank hacks in the US, Capital One has acknowledged in a press release on Monday. The bank launched into damage control mode almost immediately, pinning the breach on one "highly sophisticated individual" who penetrated the bank's defenses, but emphasizing that "no other instances" of the specific "configuration vulnerability" were found. Also, it took a third-party bug-hunter to bring the vulnerability to Capital One's notice earlier this month, and they still took two days to find the breach.

Comment: See also:


Arrow Up

Muslims worldwide calling for boycott of Hajj pilgrimage to protest Saudi war crimes in Yemen

Mecca
© Sputnik / Mikhail Voskresenskiy
Muslim worshippers at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca in 2017.
Next month more than two million Muslims from around the world are expected to descend on the cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

But a growing number of Muslims, including some in Australia, are turning their backs on what is one of the central pillars of Islam, and calling for a boycott of the event.

Sydney-based aspiring filmmaker Faraaz Rahman says he believes going to Hajj at the present time is not morally responsible.

"Going for Hajj would financially contribute to the Saudi regime, which currently is carrying out mass atrocities in Yemen against fellow Muslims. This is not what the Hajj is meant to be about," the 31-year-old told SBS News.

Comment: Saudi Arabia's crimes against humanity are only possible thanks to the West and Israel, and so, while this boycott is unlikely to have any immediate nor resounding impact on the death eating hydra plaguing the Middle East, it's nevertheless an admirable and worthy cause: Also check out SOTT radio's:


Vader

Colombia is the real 'Venezuela': Day after mass protests against targeted killings of 700+ civil society leaders, ANOTHER leading activist is murdered by the state

colombia state killings
© Steven Grattan/ Al Jazeera
Protesters arrived at Bogota's main public square, Plaza Bolivar, calling for an end to state killings
Colombian social leader Yisella Trujillo and her husband were shot dead less than 24 hours after an international march calling for an end to murders of social activist in the country.

Yisella Trujillo, a social leader from Colombia was murdered Saturday, less than 24 hours after a march took place against the mass murders of Colombian social and community leaders including members of the People's Alternative Revolutionary Force of Colombia (FARC).

Trujillo and her husband were shot at in Puerto Rico, Caqueta Saturday. She died at the spot and her husband died while the first respondents tried to save his life.

Puerto Rico's ombudsman Herner Carreño told local media that Trujillo and her family reported death threats for trying to reclaim their dispossessed land back from where they fled during the armed conflict.

Mayor Hernan Bravo said, "we hope that with the accompaniment of all the institutions we will be able to clarify this regrettable incident that we reject and repudiate."


Comment: See also:




Biohazard

LGB vs. T: How the transgender issue is dividing a movement

LGB vs. T
Today there are tensions between a second-wave feminism that is worried about people who were born men co-opting their movement and a younger feminism that embraces all people who self-identify as women. The new view has largely won that fight, and this victory has influenced how the broader public discusses trans issues.

Consider what happened to filmmaker Kimberly Peirce at Reed College in 2016. She had been invited to Reed College in the fall of 2016 for a screening of her landmark 1999 film Boys Don't Cry. The movie tells the true story of a transgender man who was murdered. Peirce herself has identified as a lesbian and genderqueer, and her movie contains a message of acceptance.

To say that Peirce was not well received at Reed would be a considerable understatement. Students hung profane posters near the podium; one read "You don't fucking get it." Waiting at the podium itself was a "Fuck you" poster, and students screamed other expletives at Peirce, bringing the event to an early close.

Comment: See also:


No Entry

Fascism victorious as Greek MPs finally submit to globalists' anti-smoking regime

greece smoking parliament

The former EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andrikaitis, himself Greek, earlier this year 'shamed' Greece's deputy health minister Pavlos Polakis for smoking in public, saying "He knows nothing of health!"
Until not so very long ago Greek MPs thought nothing of lighting up in the august halls of the Athens parliament.

So common was the habit that a thick fog of cigarette smoke often hovered over the building's cafe, a few metres from the legislative chamber where deputies had once voted to ban smoking in all public spaces, including the 300-seat House.

Nine years, 10 months and 26 days after that ban came into effect, lawmakers are finally being forced to abide by it too.

"There's definitely been a change," said Dimitris Tarantsas, who has waited on MPs from behind the cafe's bench-top bar for the past 18 years. "The law, for the first time, is being upheld."

Comment: Good effort, Greece. You held out well. But there was only ever going to be one winner.

Onwards into the Glorious Clean Future!


Bizarro Earth

52 killed as prison gangs riot & decapitate 16 rivals in Brazil - UPDATE

brazil riot
© YouTube/ virtual e Curioso
More than 50 people have been killed after intense, hours-long violence broke out in a prison in Para, Brazil. Officials say 16 of the dead were decapitated as rival prison gangs fought.

Extremely graphic footage shared online purportedly filmed inside the prison shows men kicking and tossing several severed heads around as bodies lie prone nearby. Other footage shows part of the prison in flames.

Fighting broke out in the Altamira Regional Recovery Center around 7am local time when the members of one gang invaded an area occupied by a rival group, an official from the Para state government's penitentiary department said.

Comment: See also: UPDATE 30/07/2019: Spurnik further reports:
A total of 57 prisoners were killed as a result of a riot in a jail in Brazil's northern state of Para, Reuters reported. During the riot, 16 people were reportedly beheaded, while some other prisoners suffocated to death after a fire broke out in the building.
brazil prison riot beheadings 2019

Riots at prison in Brazil leaves over 50 dead.
The incident was reportedly provoked by two crime gangs, which were in conflict with each other. The riot reportedly began at 7:00 a.m. local time (10:00 GMT) and ended at noon on Monday.

"It was a targeted act [...] The aim was to show that it was a settling of accounts between the two gangs", state prison director Jarbas Vasconcelos said in the statement, adding there was no prior intelligence that suggested an attack would take place, according to Reuters.

According to the organization, many prisoners awaiting trial are held next to those who have already been convicted, which is against human rights principles, while harsh laws on drug possession lead to people being jailed for minor offenses and thus becoming vulnerable to recruitment by gangs.



Arrow Up

Death toll rises to 20 with 50 injured in attack on Afghan president's deputy office in Kabul

Afghani ambulance
© AP/Musadeq Sadeq
A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry earlier said that two out of four terrorists who attacked the electoral office have been gunned down by the police.

At least 20 were killed and 50 injured in attack on the electoral office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's election running mate Amrullah Saleh in Kabul on Sunday, the government said in a statement on Monday.

"The attack started at around 04:30 Sunday afternoon on Afghanistan Green Trend Office with a car bombing which was followed by armed men attack. The attack killed 20 people and wounded 50 more," the statement said.

On Sunday, at least two people were reported killed and 25 more wounded as a result of the bombing that occurred near Saleh's electoral office. Militants detonated an explosive laden vehicle at about 05:00 p.m. local time (12:30 GMT). The country's Interior Ministry said later in the day that the group of four militants stormed Saleh's office following the explosion.

No militant group has claimed responsibility for the bombing so far.

The attack came after electoral campaigns for the upcoming presidential election started earlier in the day. The vote is set to take place on September 28.

Star of David

Near Old City's Jaffa Gate, a final showdown looms for Jerusalem's historic hotel

New Imperial Hotel
© TripAdvisor
New Imperial Hotel, Jerusalem's Old City
Standing on a balcony at the New Imperial Hotel, overlooking Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, 75-year-old Walid Dajani last week declared a one-man war on Jewish settlers.

Officials from Israel's supreme court had served an eviction notice against Dajani following a ruling last month that the disputed 2005 sale of the historic 40-room hotel to a radical settler group was valid. The Jewish settlers' organisation Ateret Cohanim immediately branded him "a squatter" and threatened to seize the building. Such a move would establish a strategically valuable settler presence just inside Jaffa Gate, the main entrance to the ancient city's Christian Quarter.

According to Dajani, the settlers - who seek to create a Jewish majority throughout the Old City which, along with East Jerusalem, was annexed by Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 - are enacting "the rape of Jaffa Gate". His family has owned land on nearby Mount Zion for 800 years, and has run the New Imperial since 1949. "From this moment I am embarking on the fight of my life," he said, calling on Christians, Muslims, Jews and world leaders to fall in behind him. "On my back, they will take me out."

Comment: See also: Israeli court hands ownership of Greek Orthodox church property in Jerusalem to illegal settlers


Toys

Oh, baby! 36 nurses in Kansas City hospital NICU due to give birth this year

20 babies
© Allison Ronco
20 babies have been born to the 36 nurses who were expecting at Children's Mercy Kansas City's NICU.
How many pregnant nurses does it take to save the lives of babies in need?

At this one intensive care nursery, 36 to be exact.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Nursery (NICU) at Children's Mercy in Kansas City, Missouri, had an impressive number of 36 pregnant nurses due in 2019.

Allison Ronco, 32, a critical care education coordinator and nurse, was the first of three dozen to give birth, to a beautiful baby boy named Henry, on January 7.