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NIS, a Russian company sanctioned by the US and owned by Russians, restarts Serbian refinery
Serbia's energy ministry said that the majority-owned Russian oil company NIS had restarted its refinery in Serbia and resumed crude oil imports after receiving a waiver from United States sanctions. In an Instagram post, Energy Minister Dubravka Handanovic stated that the refinery was restarted following a break of nearly two months. She stated that the first diesel produced by the refinery following the restart of the plant should be on the market before January 27. In October, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is part of the Treasury Department, imposed sanctions against NIS. The majority stake in NIS belongs to Russia’s Gazprom and Gazprom. NIS was given until the end of March to complete the sale of stakes to Russian companies. It is currently in the middle of negotiations with Hungary's MOL. Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian foreign minister, said that he expected that OFAC would approve the initial sale in the next few days. NIS, the sole oil refinery in Serbia was granted a sanction?reprieve until January 23 by OFAC, allowing it import crude oil through Croatia's JANAF pipe. Gazprom owns 11.3% of NIS and Gazprom neft 44.9%. Serbian government owns 29.9% of NIS. (Reporting and editing by Tom Hogue; Additional reporting by LefterisPapadimas)
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In Thailand, crane accident kills 32 people
The regional governor reported that a train derailed on Wednesday in northeastern Thailand after a crane fell onto two of its wagons. At least 32 people were killed and 66 injured. The accident happened in the 'Sikhio' district of Nakhon Ratchasima Province, 230 km northeast of Bangkok. It was on a train bound for Ubon Ratchathani. In a press release, Transport Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn stated that there were 195 passengers aboard the train. He also said he ordered an investigation. The crane, which was working on high-speed rail construction project collapsed when it hit a passing train. This caused the train to derail briefly and catch fire. After being briefed on the incident, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said to reporters that the State Railway of Thailand should provide good compensation to the families of those who died. He added: "We must investigate... and take legal actions." The Italian-Thai Development Public Company Limited, which had been contracted to build the rail section, expressed regret and promised to compensate and provide relief to the families of those who died. A 30-storey Bangkok building being constructed by a joint-venture including ITD collapsed in March of last year killing 89 after an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 struck Myanmar. ITD President Premchai Karnasuta was Indicted on August Along with 22 other people on allegations of negligence, and breaching "construction regulations". When they were arrested for the first time in May, the executive and 14 other people denied any wrongdoing. Smoke Billows from Wreckage The ministry shared images of train carriages flipped over next to shrubland, and firefighters extinguishing an blaze while smoke billowed. The footage, which was verified by, showed rescue workers attempting to remove casualties from a mangled carriage. Some of the badly injured passengers were already being loaded into ambulances. The elevated high-speed railway project was built above an existing rail line. The concrete stanchions that were built to support the rail link are still holding up a part of the collapsed crane. Debris is dangling from the tracks below. The project is part of a transnational high-speed rail link between the Thai capital and the southwest Chinese city Kunming. The recovery operations continued at the accident site into the evening of Wednesday.?Anutin said that the track must be cleared by the weekend. He said that delays on this major rail line would harm the local economy. HIGH-SPEED LINK?CONNECTS CHINA THROUGH THE LAOS Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that Beijing attaches great importance to the safety of personnel and projects in Thailand. "At the moment, it appears that a Thai company was building the relevant section." The cause of the accident remains under investigation. The high-speed cross-country rail project will link to China via Laos. Last year, the government announced that more than one-third of the construction work had been completed on the segment between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima. The entire line from Nong Khai to the border with Laos is expected to be ready by 2030. (Reporting Panarat Thepgumpanat, Panu Wongcha -um and Ethan Wang from Beijing; editing David Stanway Sharon Singleton Mark Heinrich
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Indonesian authorities discover wreckage of a missing surveillance plane that had 11 people on board
Indonesian authorities announced on Sunday that they have located the wreckage from a missing fisheries-surveillance plane in South Sulawesi Province near a foggy mountain. They are still searching for 11 people who were on board. The ATR42-500 turboprop owned by Indonesia Air Transport lost touch with air traffic control on Saturday around 1:30 pm local time (0530 GMT), in the Maros area of South Sulawesi. The plane was chartered by Indonesia’s Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry for air surveillance of fisheries. The passengers were staff from the ministry. The head of South Sulawesi’s rescue agency, Muhammad Arif Anwar said on local TV that the rescuers will deploy 1,200 people to?search the missing passengers and crew. He said, "Our first priority is to find the victims. We hope there are some that we can safely evacuate." Before losing contact, the aircraft was heading towards Makassar (the capital of South Sulawesi) after leaving Yogyakarta. Andi Sultan, a South Sulawesi rescue agency official, said that local rescuers discovered the wreckage around Mount Bulusaraung on Sunday morning. The mountain is located approximately 1,500 km (930 mi) northeast of Jakarta, the capital city of this island nation. Sultan informed reporters that "our helicopter crews saw the debris from the plane's windows at 7:46 am." He said that around 7:49 am, large pieces of aircraft were discovered, which he suspected to be fuselage. The tail of the airplane was also visible at the bottom slope of the mountain. Sultan said that rescuers were deployed at the sites where the wreckage had been discovered. He added that the search for the wreckage was hindered by dense fog and the mountainous terrain. Video footage released by the'rescue agency' shows a window from the plane scattered around the mountain in thick fog. Sultan stated that the National Transportation Safety Committee of Indonesia would be leading an investigation into this crash. Experts say that the cause of this accident is still unclear. The ATR 42 500, produced by the franco-italian planemaker ATR, is a regional turboprop aircraft that can carry between 42 and fifty passengers. Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, said that on X the plane was over the ocean and at a low level so its coverage was limited. The last signal was received around 20 km northeast of Makassar Airport at 0420 GMT. (Reporting and editing by Jamie Freed; Ananda Teresia)
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EU Summit Chair: European Union is weighing its response to Trump's Greenland Tariffs
Antonio Costa, the European Council president, said that the EU is'very firm' in defending international law. He was responding to a question regarding new tariff threats by U.S. President Donald Trump. Costa also added that he was working on an "EU response" on this issue. Costa said at a press briefing after the EU signed a free-trade agreement with Mercosur and Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European allies for refusing to support his desire to take over Greenland. He continued, "For the time being, I'm coordinating a response from the European Union member states on this issue." (Writing and Editing by Mark Potter.)
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India fines IndiGo $2.45Million for December cancellations
IndiGo was fined a record amount of?222 millions Indian rupees (2.45 million dollars) by India's aviation regulator on Saturday for "poor roster planning" that resulted in mass cancellations of flights in December. The regulator issued warnings for senior staff, including Chief Operating Officer Isidre?Porqueras, and Jason Herter, Senior Vice?President of Operations Control Centre, with instructions to IndiGo to relieve Herter?of "current operational responsibilities". According to a government source, the fine was the highest ever. IndiGo has been ordered to provide a $5.51m bank guarantee in favor of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. This is "to ensure compliance with the directives, and long-term correction of the system," according to the regulator. IndiGo stated in a press release that the board and management are "committed to taking full cognisance and will take appropriate measures, 'in a thoughtful manner and on time. India's biggest airline, Air India, canceled 4,500 flights in the first weeks of December. This left tens of thousand of passengers stranded across the country. It also caused chaos at airports. Reporting by Abhijith Gaapavaram and Rajveer Pardesi, Editing by Toby Chopra & Barbara Lewis
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Indonesia searches for missing surveillance aircraft with 11 onboard
Officials?said that Indonesian rescuers searched on Saturday for a missing ATR 42500 fisheries monitoring aircraft with 11 people aboard. Andi Sultan, a local rescue official, said that the Indonesia Air Transport plane had lost contact with air traffic control at around 1:30 pm (0530 GMT), in the Maros area of South Sulawesi Province. Sultan stated that the aircraft was heading towards Makassar (the capital of South Sulawesi) after leaving?Yogyakarta Province before contact was lost. He added that there were eight crew members and three passengers aboard. Sultan stated that around 400 personnel including military and law enforcement units were deployed to search for the aircraft and its passengers, but the effort was hampered by bad weather. Sultan declined to make any comments on the 'possible cause' of -the incident. We suspect that the plane crashed near the summit of Mount Bulusaraung. He said that our personnel had been deployed there. Pung Nugroho Sasono, a ministry official who works for the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MoMAF), told the state news agency Antara that this plane was chartered. The three passengers, according to Marine Affairs and Fisheries minister Sakti Wahyu Trnggono, were staff of the ministry conducting air surveillance for?fisheries. The ATR 42 500 is a regional turboprop capable of carrying 42 to 50 passengers. Flightradar24 has unconfirmed data that an aircraft matching this description flew eastward at 11,000 feet over the Java Sea before rapidly losing altitude and dropping tracking systems. ATR, a Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer in France, said that it was notified of an accident occurring in Indonesia. Its specialists are assisting the local authorities with their investigations. Reporting by Ananda Teresia from Jakarta, Tim Hepher from Paris and Rajveer S. Pardesi from Bengaluru. Toby Chopra, Mark Potter and Toby Chopra edited the story.
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US rail regulator finds merger application between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern incomplete
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board sent Union Pacific's $85 billion merger proposal with Norfolk Southern back to be revised on Friday, saying that it was missing required information. This is part of an ongoing review by the U.S. The STB rejected the application in December, citing a lack of projections on market share and competition impacts. The board denied the application without prejudice and allowed the railroads to re-file once they addressed the deficiencies. Donald Trump publicly supported the merger proposal. The administration tends to 'approve large transactions or impose remedy rather than blocking them outright. A merger of this magnitude was considered unthinkable during the Biden administration's broader crackdown against consolidation. This is the first major proposed?merger of railroads to be reviewed using the more stringent framework that was put in place over?two decades ago. The stricter framework?requires applicants?to prove their transaction will enhance competition, not just preserve it?while delivering demonstrable benefits to the public?interest? The board stated that the railroads had projected growth in traffic and divertions from the proposed coast to coast railroad, but only provided data for 2023, not the projections required showing how the combined carrier’s?share could evolve several years after the merger. The decision follows a filing in January by Canadian National. It argued that there were critical 'competitive disclosures' missing from the application, including a methodology to identify routes where two rails feed into one another and complete lists of 'potentially affected shippers'. Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern submitted their nearly 7,000-page application to the Federal Communications Commission on December 19. They claimed that this combination would increase?service reliability?, divert truck freight onto rails, maintain shipper options, and provide broad public benefits, while protecting union jobs. The STB stated that the ruling it issued should not be interpreted as a guideline for how it would ultimately determine whether a revised application was admissible.
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PJM announces plan to combat AI-driven surge in power demand
Grid operator PJM Interconnection unveiled a plan on Friday to manage'surging power 'demand from data centres that are required for Big Tech’s artificial intelligence expansion. This comes after the White House urged immediate action to avoid potential blackouts. PJM Interconnection announced that it plans to require large power users?to either bring their own generation or?enter a connect-and-manage framework subject to an early curtailment. The White House had earlier in the day urged the largest U.S. power grid to conduct an emergency auction to prevent rolling blackouts, as the energy demand for data centers is growing faster than the nation can build new generation facilities. PJM controls a large part of the 'power flow' in 13 states, mainly in the Mid-Atlantic region, including the 'largest concentration in data centers, in Virginia. Other?states are also becoming hubs for server storage. PJM’s board stated that its plan 'would focus on bringing a new?power generator online quickly, and would be coupled to options for new load customers whose energy demand can be curtailed if necessary. Reporting by Laila Mukherjee and Anushree Mokherjee from New York; Editing by Leroy Leo, Lisa Shumaker
Iranian official: verified deaths in Iran protests at least 5,000
A regional Iranian official said that authorities have'verified' at least 5,000 deaths in protests in Iran. This includes?about 500 security personnel. He blamed "terrorists" and "armed rioters", for the deaths of "innocent Iranians".
The official who refused to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter, said that some of the 'heaviest clashes' and 'highest number of deaths occurred in the Iranian Kurdish regions in northwest Iran. This is a region in which?Kurdish Separatists are active, and where past unrest has seen the most violent flare-ups.
The official stated that the final death toll was not expected to increase dramatically. He added that "Israel and other armed groups" abroad had supported and provided equipment for those who took the streets.
The Iranian authorities blame the unrest on their enemies including Israel. Israel is an arch enemy of the Islamic Republic and launched military attacks on Iran in June.
The HRANA rights group, based in the United States, said that on Saturday?the death toll reached 3,308, and another 4,382 were under review. The group said it had confirmed a total of more than 24,000 arrests.
Hengaw (an Iranian Kurdish group based in Norway) has said that some of the most violent clashes occurred in Kurdish regions in the north-west during the protests which erupted late December. Edmund Blair, Louise Heavens and Edmund Blair are responsible for the editing.
(source: Reuters)