Russia is warning that the decision by US President Donald Trump to pull America out of a nuclear agreement with Iran and re-instate sanctions against the country could push oil prices to new highs.

Igor Sechin, the chief executive officer of Russia’s oil giant Rosneft, was quoted by media as saying that the sanctions against Iran – that would include bans on purchases of oil from the country – could cause an inevitable reduction of Iranian barrels in the global supply pool.

Sechin added that the sanctions against Iran could knock at least five percent of global oil production offline.

He warned that new price records might be on the horizon due to Trump’s anti-Iran move particularly now that oil futures were already sliding on expectation of higher Russian and Saudi production – amid signals that the ongoing OPEC and non-OPEC production cut agreement to the tune of 1.8 million barrels per day might be canned, according to a report by the Forbes.

Drivers and industries across Europe and the U.S. will feel the effects of action taken by the White House, as the revoking of the Iran Nuclear deal – “a non-market factor” makes the global oil sector unpredictable, Sechin – widely believed to be close to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – added.

“I have to say that the US has consistently pursued the policy of non-acceptance of international agreements, which would allow challenging their actions on global platforms. In fact, judicial protection and fair market arbitration are off the table.”

On Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer warned that Trump’s decision to pull the US out of Iran nuclear deal could affect America’s consumption market and criticized the president for failing to take a proper action to stop this.

Schumer criticized Trump over the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and exhorted the president to “stand up to OPEC” over the price issue.

“It’s time for this president to stand up to OPEC,” he said.

“He’s palling around with the Saudis and the UAE and all these other oil-rich countries. Why doesn’t he ask them to lower their prices?” Schumer said, added that Trump “should buck his oil industry buddies.”

Schumer said that gasoline prices had jumped 25 percent since Trump took office in January 2017 and blamed his policies – specifically those concerning the Middle East and Iran – for this.

Culled from Presstv

Southern Cameroons economy is rightly an afterthought compared to the scope of suffering that has accompanied the senseless war launched by President Biya. Approximately 1300 are dead. Some 40,000 Ambazonians have fled the country to Nigeria and as many as 160,000 others have been displaced internally according to the United Nations.

Correspondingly, it’s worth noting the almost utter economic devastation. Cameroon Concord News Group estimates that more than 95% of the Southern Cameroons economy has been destroyed by the war. Understandably, our estimate is based on very limited data and conjecture due to the fact that the French Cameroun army soldiers have prevented all our efforts at getting access to most important data ever since the revolution began.

For the record, the two year destruction of more than three-quarters of the Southern Cameroons economy would rank among one of the steeper economic collapses ever recorded deep within the African continent, outpacing the catastrophic economic decline of Biafra after their defeat in the Nigerian civil war. As the killing of innocent Southern Cameroons civilians continue in places such as Santa and Pinyin village, it would take Africa’s newest state-the Federal Republic of Ambazonia about 40 years to reach its pre-war real GDP level.

By Seseskou Asu Isong, London

SatADSL, a provider of VSAT services via satellite, and Cameroonian operator Camtel, have announced a partnership to provide satellite connectivity nationwide. The formal agreement follows a pilot of SatADSL’s services at various public and private enterprises and communities in Cameroon, including schools, post offices, hospitals and banks.

SatADSL plans to integrate and deploy its VSAT services in the central African country, enabling Camtel to offer competitive broadband packages to even the most rural areas. SatADSL will fulfil all of Camtel’s satellite connectivity requirements on every frequency range, namely Ku-, Ka- and C-band. Camtel is the latest operator in Africa to deploy SatADSL’s services, which are offered through the Cloud-based Service Delivery Platform (C-SDP).

The complete OSS/BSS, carrier-grade, fully redundant platform allows operators easily to outsource satellite services, reducing the cost of providing ubiquitous connectivity by enabling fast, flexible and future-proof satellite connectivity via the cloud for the first time, eliminating the need for physical infrastructure.

Source: Telecompaper

Hundreds of millions of pesos have been illegally withdrawn from several Mexican banks in possible cyber attacks in recent weeks, Mexican officials have announced.

Hackers sent hundreds of false orders to transfer funds from banks, including No. 2 Banorte, to fake accounts in other banks, and accomplices then emptied the accounts in cash withdrawals in scores of branch offices, two sources close to a Mexican government investigation of the matter said.

One source said the thieves transferred more than 300 million pesos ($15.4 million) while the El Financiero newspaper reported that around 400 million pesos had been stolen.

It was not clear how much of the money transferred was later withdrawn in cash.

Speaking to reporters late on Monday, Mexico’s Central Bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon described the attacks as unprecedented, expressing hope that unspecified measures being taken would stop similar future incidents.

“There’s no evidence that would allow us to say with certainty that this is over,” he said, adding “We’re taking corrective and mitigating action.”

Diaz de Leon declined to name the banks targeted or specify the amounts stolen. He said the central bank was still probing what had happened.

He later said in a radio interview that all the evidence — so far still partial — pointed to cyberattacks.

The central bank’s head of operations, Lorenza Martinez, said on Friday that five financial institutions were targeted with “unauthorized transfers.”

One source said cyber attackers might have received assistance from inside bank branches, since such big cash withdrawals were uncommon.

“In terms of the security of the bank’s offices, I think that is part of the analysis that each bank is doing,” Martinez said.

He stressed that clients’ accounts had not been affected so far and that only the accounts of financial institutions in the Central Bank had been hit.

Source: Presstv

Air France-KLM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jean-Marc Janaillac has offered to resign after employees rejected a pay raise.

The 65-year-old CEO announced his resignation on Friday making good on an earlier promise to step down if he failed to end the weeks-long strikes.

Staff and management at the flagship carrier have been locked in a wage dispute since February.

“I accept the consequences,” said Janaillac after 55.44 percent of Air France workers voted against a seven percent over a four-year pay raise.

Janaillac described the workers’ decision as a “huge waste” of resources after revealing last month that the industrial action cost Air France 25 million euros per day.

The decision came as workers began a fresh round of intermittent strikes Friday, prompting the cancellation of a quarter of flights on average.

“Air France was on the road to success. I regret that that dynamic was not understood (by workers),” he said.

Unions argued the raise was too little after years of restructuring during which pay was frozen, and demanded a 5.1-percent raise this year instead.

The move coincided with Air France-KLM’s release of first-quarter earnings, which showed a net loss of 269 million euros ($322 million), weighed down by three days of strikes which cost about 25 million euros per day according to the company.

The industrial action by Air France personnel comes amid persisting rolling strikes by rail workers at state-owned SNCF railways, as well as protests by students, public servants, energy workers, and garbage collectors.

Source: Presstv

French industrialist Vincent Bolloré was taken into custody on Tuesday morning at the premises of the judicial police in Nanterre, France.

According to French media company, Le Monde, the billionaire businessman is being investigated for influence peddling and corruption in Africa, specifically the conditions under which he obtained two of the sixteen container terminals in the ports of Lomé and Conakry, in 2010.

State prosecutors believe that Bollores, who has interests in several African countries, could have taken advantage of his Havas communications agency to facilitate African heads of state into power in exchange for concessions to operate these terminals.

They seek to draw a connection between Havas’ management of the 2010 presidential campaigns of the Guinean President Alpha Condé and Faure Gnassingbé of Togo at ridiculously subsidised prices and the subsequent acquisition of port rights by Bolloré Africa Logistics.

Other executives of the group were also taken into custody on Tuesday, including Gilles Alix, CEO of the Bolloré group, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, head of the international division of the Havas communications agency.

According to Le Monde, numerous documents were seized during searches carried out in April 2016 at the headquarters of the Bolloré group in Puteaux (Hauts-de-Seine). These documents reportedly confirm the state’s suspicions about under-invoicing of the presidential campaigns led by Havas.

The group has since formally denied any irregularities in the way they conduct business in Africa.

Source: Africa News

The Cameroonian authorities have banned mining operations of three Chinese companies for non-compliant with contractual terms. Cameroon’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Technological Development said on Saturday.

The companies, Hong Kong, Peace Mining and Lu, and Lang, the ministry said would no longer perform gold panning activities in the region of East-Cameroon.

The government ordered the companies to leave Cameroon. It appeared from the statement that Hong Kong company did not have documents authorizing it to carry out mining activities.

As for the Peace Mining and Lu and Lang companies, their departure is linked to a series of conflicts recorded between their employees and local populations which have resulted in deaths, in addition to the non-respect of the environment, according to the statement.

These companies reportedly contributed significantly to the degradation of the environment through the diversion of rivers, and obstruction of rivers by mud, which has had a negative impact on agriculture and livestock.

According to some NGOs, the gold exploitation activities in Cameroon of Chinese companies had caused the death of 34 people in 2017.

Besides, just for the first three months of the current year, several people have died as a result of landslides and land erosion.

Source: APA