U.S. House wants better pipeline rules

A bill in the U.S. House of Representatives aims to strengthen rules regarding the safety of oil and natural gas pipelines, a lawmaker said.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power approved a measure that would update the maximum allowable operating pressure on pipelines and include new provisions for those crossing waterways.

The House committee said the legislation is in response to last year's deadly natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif., and the July oil spill in the Yellowstone River near Billings, Mont.

A September 2010 gas explosion killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes in San Bruno. The Silvertip pipeline operated by Exxon Mobil spilled around 1,000 barrels into the Yellowstone River when it ruptured July 1.

"This bill demands improvements in both technology and personnel that can help prevent leaks from occurring in the first place and reduce the damage if they do," U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement.

Line pressure on the San Bruno line caused a weld seam to rupture. Investigators haven't indicated a cause for the Silvertip rupture, though officials in December confirmed the pipeline was buried 5 feet below the riverbed, meeting the 4-feet-depth-of-cover requirements of pipeline safety regulators.

U.K. energy group Afren moves into Iraq

London oil and natural gas explorer Afren announced it acquired two production-sharing contracts for work in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

The company said it was placing more than 80 million shares on the market to raise cash for the purchase of stakes in the Ain Sifni and Barda Rash fields in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Combined reserves from the fields are estimated at around 1 billion barrels.

Afren Chief Executive Officer Osman Shahenshah said in a statement the acquisition is consistent with his company's efforts to increase its recoverable reserve base by more than 700 percent.

"With a team in place, we expect to generate an incremental 75,000 barrels of oil per day net to Afren within five years from the Barda Rash field alone," he said.

Afren said the Kurdish region of Iraq is an attractive upstream investment opportunity. Undiscovered fields in the region could hold as much as 70 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The move follows recent breakthroughs in disputes between the Kurdish and central governments in Iraq regarding the country's oil sector.

U.S. oil and gas company Hess announced similar work in the Kurdish region earlier this week.

Food imports put Cuban reforms at risk

High food imports are putting Cuban economic reforms at risk because of the drain they pose on foreign exchange resources.

The government sounded warnings about rising food commodities import bills after it emerged that while Vietnam, the lead exporter, saw earnings rise from rice sales to Cuba, Havana's cash-strapped state trade sector wasn't too pleased about the situation.

Cuban President Raul Castro has been exhorting Cubans to become self-reliant and has laid off of tens of thousands of government employees to cut state spending and signal his readiness to accept a gradual shift toward a market-oriented economy.

Cubans catapulted out of state employment were told to become self-employed and start anew as merchants and entrepreneurs.

State curbs on buying and selling in the marketplace were eased and Cubans were told they could buy and sell real estate. The rule change that has sent the fledgling market economy into a subdued frenzy as would-be property tycoons begin to hone their skills in a fast-changing business environment.

However, government statistics indicated the food import bill was a major worry. Cuba imports up to 60 percent of rice it consumes and, by the latest count, bought more than 400,000 tons of the commodity to meet basic needs, Juventud Rebelde newspaper reported.

The import bill is set to rise as domestic demand for the staple grain this year is likely to exceed that level and may reach 600,000 tons to meet the basic needs of Cuba's population of 11.2 million.

Despite numerous moves to relax state control on food distribution and supply, Cubans depend on rationing to fulfill basic needs for rice and other consumables.

Grain Research Institute Director Telce Gonzalez said self-sufficiency in food was crucial to Cuba's economic well-being.

"The first challenge is to produce what we need," he said, adding that, although Cuban agriculture expanded areas under rice cultivation, it still had a long way to go to realize that goal.

This year, the government will need to import almost double the quantity of rice it produces for domestic consumption, new estimates indicated.

Vietnam is Cuba's main supplier of rice. Neither side has disclosed the terms under which Cuba buys rice from Vietnam, a socialist nation in an advanced stage of transformation into a market economy.

The prospect of the state trade sector having to pay more for imports sent the government into overdrive this month. There were calls to institutions to galvanize rice farmers to produce more and reduce dependence on imports.

The campaign aims at raising awareness of about 50 varieties of the grain that can be grown in the island's different ecosystems for maximum rice yield.

Cuba's agriculture suffered when it lost export markets as they ditched communism and switched to capitalist options, or cut imports with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The government frequently has set targets to boost rice production and reduce dependence on imports but has missed reaching any of the goals.

Libya's TNC courting Washington

Washington is reviewing a request from the Libyan Transitional National Council to open an embassy in the United States, the U.S. State Department said.

London this week summoned Libyan representatives of Moammar Gadhafi to inform them the TNC was recognized as the sole governmental authority in Tripoli.

Members of the NATO intervention in Libya at a recent meeting in Istanbul recognized the legitimacy of the TNC. London said it was working with the TNC to assign diplomats in the country to take the place of Gadhafi's.

Mark Toner, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said TNC officials have asked to set up a presence in Washington.

Kashmir trade talks featured in New Delhi

Agreements for increased cross-border trade between Indian and Pakistani areas of Kashmir were reached during peace talks in New Delhi, authorities said.

Trade issues between Pakistan and India were expected to top the agenda during formal talks in New Delhi.

The talks came less than two weeks after a triple bombing in Mumbai left 19 people killed and another 120 people injured. The 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai perpetrated by Pakistani fighters with Lashkar-e-Toiba overshadowed efforts at peace between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

The foreign ministers of both nations said that talks were moving in the right direction. There were no major agreements reached on Kashmir or terrorism, the BBC reports, though cross-border trade and relaxed travel rules were discussed during the talks on Kashmir.

The countries went to war on three separate occasions over Kashmir.

Pakistani forces in May accused the Indian military of firing on their positions in Kashmir, killing one Pakistani soldier.

Islamabad complained early this year that India was hijacking bilateral talks by focusing on militancy and ignoring issues such as water and the disputed region of Kashmir.

China announces its first aircraft carrier

China's Defense Ministry says it will refit and recommission an imported aircraft carrier purchased from Ukraine for "scientific" research and training.

The announcement is the first official confirmation that the country is pursuing an aircraft carrier program.

"China is making use of an old aircraft carrier platform for scientific research, experiment and training," ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday.

The vessel is an empty aircraft carrier shell purchased from Ukraine, which disarmed it and removed its engines before selling it to China.

"The warship is still seaworthy, as it has been docked at sea for some time. The time for its first sea trial will depend on the refitting schedule," Geng said.

"As an important part of the research and training program, training for aircraft pilots is also in progress," he said.

Geng said the pursuit of an aircraft carrier program would not change the navy's inshore defense strategy, Xinhua reported.

China's need for an aircraft carrier grows from its long coastline and large area of territorial waters, Geng said.

Once recommissioned, the aircraft carrier will make China the last of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to possess a carrier.

Israel rejects civil marriage proposal

Israel's Parliament maintained the religious monopoly on marriage Wednesday, rejecting a civil alternative.

"Israel is the only democracy in the world where Jews don't have freedom of religion," said leftist member Nitzan Horowitz, a sponsor of the measure. "There are currently hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are considered without religion and cannot marry in Israel."

But Justice Minister Yaacov Neeman said the bill violated "the norm in Israel since the establishment of the state," which placed marriage and divorce for Jews under Jewish religious law.

Neeman warned that if people married under Jewish law were allowed to divorce without a rabbinical court, the wives would become unable to remarry and the children bastards.

"This bill is an offense to the unity of the Jewish people," he said.

Centrist member Orit Zuaretz spoke wearing a white wedding dress but was forced to remove her veil.

"This bill isn't against anything, rather aimed at expanding the current arrangement, alongside Judaism, to those who cannot marry according to Jewish law. Some 3,500 Israelis marry in Cyprus each year; we need an alternative," she said.

Dozens die in Philippines tropical storm

Tropical storm Nock-ten pummeled Luzon in the Philippines, killing more than two dozen people so far, officials said Wednesday.

Gulf News reported the death toll from the storm, dubbed Juaning locally, that made landfall on the island Tuesday was at least 29, while The Manila Times put the count at 27.

The Times reported at least nine people were missing.

Most of the fatalities occurred in Luzon's Bicol Region and Quezon province. The deaths were attributed to drownings, landslides, fallen trees, electrocution and heart attacks.

Gulf News said 15 crew members of MV Henrik, which was swept away by rough waters off Balisan Island in Quezon, were found early Tuesday. Rescuers had saved 30 people, most of them fishermen, from the sea in the past three days, the news service said.

Luzon was immobilized by floods, power outages, impassable roads and broken bridges, Gulf News said.

The storm was already affecting several hundred thousand people and up to 12 million people were preparing for floods due to the swelling of rivers in suburban Marikina and Antipolo.

"The storm will remain in northern Luzon for a day before it goes away to the South China Sea," the weather bureau said.

The Times said the Department of Education suspended elementary and high school classes in Baguio City in Mountain and Benguet provinces Wednesday, and the Senate in Manila closed for the day.

"Those two provinces are under water," Benito Ramos, chief of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, said.

The province of Albay was placed under a state of emergency, the newspaper said.

Russia successfully tests missle

Russia successfully test fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile in the Barents Sea, officials say.

An RSM-54 Sineva missile was blasted from the Northern Fleet's nuclear-powered submarine Yekaterinburg Wednesday, RIA Novosti reported.

The missile hit an assigned target at Kamchatka's Kura test area in the Russian Far East.

The RSM-54 Sineva is a third-generation, liquid-propellant, submarine-launched ballistic missile the Russian navy adopted in July 2007, the news agency said. It has a range of up to 6m213 miles and can carry four to 10 nuclear warheads.

54 killed by storms in China

Heavy rain, strong winds and hail during severe storms across China have left at least 54 people dead in recent days, officials said Wednesday.

Thunderstorms have hit 267 counties throughout 18 provincial regions across China since Friday, Xinhua reported. Nearly 6.4 million people have been affected by the weather.

A total of $632 million in economic losses have been accrued since the beginning of the storms, a statement from the National Disaster Reduction Committee said.

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the provinces of Shandong, Sichuan and Hubei were hit hardest, the statement said.

In Weihai, a coastal city in Shandong province, heavy rains and floods have destroyed 107,000 houses. More than 124,000 people have been forced to relocate since Sunday.

Disaster relief and a survey team have been sent to the flood zone in Shandong as part of the emergency responses to the rainfall.

Four injured in Yemen protest

Yemeni regime forces attacked a group of anti-government protesters Wednesday, injuring at least four, officials say.

The demonstrators were gathered peacefully in the southern city of Ibb for a protest march to deman the dismantling of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government, Iran's PressTV reported. One of those injured was in critical condition.

Saleh's forces had also opened fire on protesters in Ra'da, a town in al-Baida province. No injuries had been reported from the Ra'da demonstration.

Hundreds of protesters have been killed by the Yemeni forces since the demonstrations began early this year.

Meanwhile, revolutionary youth groups have set up a transitional council that will put pressure on Saleh to give up power, govern the country during a transitional period and handle the prosecution of Saleh, his son and officials in his administration.

The Youth Revolution Council will have 17 members, who would include former Yemeni President Ali Nasser Mohammed, former Defense Minister General Abdullah Ali Aleiwa and leaders of several other opposition groups, including those in exile.

Saleh and five other officials are currently in Saudi Arabia, allegedly receiving treatment for injures sustained during a rocket attack on the Yemeni presidential palace on June 3.

Protesters say this will continue to rally through the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan until their demands are met.

"We will continue our sit-in through Ramadan, not just during Ramadan, until all of Saleh's regime and their elements are removed. We have now removed the root but we are left with the stem, the corrupt elements who control the oil and petroleum facilities, gas and water," an anti-government protester said.

Palin Tea Party keynote raises speculation

Reinstating U.S. goodness and strength is key to its future, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a statement, fueling speculation she'll run for president.

"We don't need a 'fundamental transformation' of America. We need a restoration of all that is good and strong and free," Palin said in a Tea Party of America statement announcing she'll deliver the keynote address at the political action committee's Sept. 3 "Restoring America" rally in Waukee, Iowa, near Des Moines.

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee's Labor Day weekend appearance would take place as the 2012 Republican nomination fight begins in earnest.

She did not say whether she would declare if she was running for president. But Real Clear Politics, a political news and polling data aggregator that first reported her appearance, said "all signs now point to September as the month when Palin would throw her hat into the ring."

Palin earlier said she would likely make her decision known in August or September.

"Gov. Palin embodies the spirit of public service that our founders believed was essential to the survival of our liberties and our republic itself," Tea Party of America co-founder Charlie Gruschow said in the statement. "We couldn't be more delighted to have this citizen leader who represents the values that Iowans and Americans hold so dear."

The Iowa group was founded in May.

The visit would be Palin's second to the key election state this year. She attended the Pella, Iowa, premiere of the laudatory documentary about her governorship, "The Undefeated," last month -- a day after Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., announced her GOP presidential candidacy elsewhere in the state.

Palin's keynote address would come two days after "The Undefeated" is released on pay-per-view and video-on-demand, ABC News reported.

Palin started her "One Nation" bus tour of Northeastern U.S. historical sites Memorial Day weekend. "The Undefeated" had its general premiere just before the Fourth of July weekend.

A June Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers indicated Palin was tied for second, at 58 percent, with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in highest percentage with a favorable opinion.

Bachmann was first with 65 percent favorable, the poll indicated.

More than a third of likely Republican caucus-goers viewed Palin unfavorably, the Register poll indicated.

Qaida: U.S. Syrian-activist support a lie

The United States is insincere in showing solidarity with activists seeking to topple Syria's president, but al-Qaida is genuine, al-Qaida's new leader said.

"America, which cooperated with [President] Bashar Assad during his whole regime, claims today that it stands with you when it saw him floored by the earthquake caused by your fury," Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a video titled "Glory of the East Starts in Damascus" posted on extremist Web sites.

It was his first video message since al-Qaida announced June 16 it named him its leader after Osama bin Laden was killed May 2 in a U.S. commando raid in Pakistan.

Washington may appear to support anti-Assad activists, whose uprising began March 15, but the United States actually wants to replace his rule "with another regime that squanders your revolution and jihad [holy war] in a new regime that follows America, takes care of Israel's interests and grants the Ummah [Muslim community or nation] some freedoms," Zawahri said in remarks translated by the Search for International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Group and cited in The Washington Post.

SITE of Bethesda, Md., tracks terrorist organizations' online activities.

Zawahri is believed to speak Arabic, French and English.

The U.S. State Department offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Tell both America and [U.S. President Barack] Obama ... our powerful uprising will not stop until we raise the victorious banner of jihad ... over Jerusalem," Zawahri said in the video showing him dressed in a white robe, turban and large glasses and seated next to an assault rifle.

Zawahri, 60, blamed the U.S. war against al-Qaida for preventing him from joining the activists, whom he called "mujahedin," or "holy warriors," in their anti-Assad uprising.

"If it were not for that, my brothers and I would have been amongst you and with you, defending you with our lives," he said in the video, which contained the word Rajab, the seventh Islamic month, which began June 3 and ended July 1.

Rajab is regarded as one of the four sacred months in Islam in which battles are prohibited.

Zawahri accused Assad of being both a corrupt tyrant and "America's partner in the war on Islam."