French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday promised to follow up French energy giant Total’s oil and gas exploration in Lebanon to ensure its continuous work, a statement by Lebanon’s Presidency reported.
‘You can count on Total’s commitments; I will follow up on the matter,’ Macron said in a phone call with his Lebanese counterpart Michel Aoun.
The leaders of Lebanon and Israel announced Tuesday that the two countries had agreed to resolve a decades-long dispute over their maritime boundary in the eastern Mediterranean.
On Thursday, Aoun announced Lebanon’s approval of the final version of the agreement proposed by the US energy envoy Amos Hochstein to demarcate maritime borders with Israel.
The agreement, a copy of which was seen by Xinhua, grants Total exploration rights at the Qana gas field.
According to the agreement, Qana would be located mostly inside Lebanon, although Total will share some profits with Israel.
For his part, President Aoun emphasised the importance of signing the border demarcation agreement in order to begin drilling operations and then the extraction of oil and gas.
XINHUA
2 (TEHRAN, 16 OCT, XINHUA) – The spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) said yesterday that uranium enrichment constitutes only part of Iran’s nuclear activities, but ‘enemies’ seek to solely highlight it.
Making the remarks in an address to a meeting, Behrouz Kamalvandi added the country has done good work in the fields of producing radiopharmaceuticals and agriculture, according to the AEOI’s website.
He noted that the ‘enemies’ do not want Iran to enter the nuclear industry at all and as a result, they seek to make the world believe that Tehran is after other objectives through its nuclear activities.
The AEOI spokesman said the United States claim that foodstuff and medicine are not in the list of sanctions on Iran is a ‘lie’.
The radiopharmaceuticals and even an Iranian producer of radiopharmaceuticals are sanctioned, he said.
In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report that it was ‘not in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful’ and that ‘no progress’ has been made in resolving questions about the past traces of nuclear material in Iran’s ‘three undeclared sites’.
XINHUA
3 (BEIJING, 16 OCT, AFP) – Chinese President Xi Jinping today hailed his Communist Party’s zero Covid policies and graft crackdown as he opened a five-yearly Congress at which thousands of delegates were set to rubberstamp his bid to rule for a historic third term.
Xi walked onstage to thunderous applause from the roughly 2 300 hand-picked attendees who had gathered at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People for the event.
In an opening address lasting about 100 minutes, Xi promoted and defended a wide range of policies under his rule and said the Congress was taking place at a ‘critical moment’ for the country.
Xi celebrated the party’s continued efforts to eradicate Covid – which are placing heavy curbs on people’s lives and is hammering the nation’s economy – as a major achievement.
He said the approach had ‘protected people’s safety and health to the highest degree’.
Xi also highlighted as a success his graft crackdown, which has seen thousands of people jailed and critics have said has been used to crush dissent and opposition to his rule.
AFP
4 (GUANAJUATO, 16 OCT, AFP) – Twelve people were killed yesterday in a shooting attack in a bar in the city of Irapuato, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the municipal government said.
Local authorities ‘confirmed the death of six men and six women’ as well as three injured people in a statement, which did not specify the identity of attackers or their motives.
AFP
5 (LONDON, 16 OCT, PA MEDIA/DPA) – British Home Secretary Suella Braverman has unveiled plans for a major crackdown on the kinds of protests favoured by climate activists – as she pledged to stop demonstrators holding the public ‘to ransom’.
The home secretary said she will give the police new powers to take a more ‘proactive’ approach to some protests, with some of the measures specifically targeted at the tactics used by some environmental groups.
Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion activists have staged various protests and demonstrations in recent months, causing disruption to commuters and traffic in central London.
Braverman had already voiced her opposition to the type of protest favoured by some environmental activists, telling the Tory conference earlier this month there is ‘not a human right to vandalise property’.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
