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Congo Tanker on fire leaving 50 dead and 100 injured  By  gowidenews 12:06 PM Report reaching us says, At least 50 people were killed on Saturday and more than 100 had second-degree burns when a tanker truck in Congo collided with a bus and, as villagers rushed to collect the leaking fuel, caught fire, witnesses and officials said. “We deplore the deaths,” the interim governor of Kongo-Central province, Atu Matubuana, told The Associated Press. Officials were preparing to identify the charred bodies and bury them, Matubuana said. The accident occurred in the village of Mbuba, not far from Kisantu city and about 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of the capital, Kinshasa. Kisantu is on the main highway between the capital and the country’s Matadi seaport. Photos  posted online by a local journalist show some of the injured, their skin raw from burns, piled into the back of a pickup truck and squeezed between people on a motorbike. Health ...

Hamas: Israel ready to help, but PA blocking fuel to Gaza power plant.  By gowidenews, Oct 6, 2018. 16:36 p.m Report reaching us says, A member of Palestinian security forces gestures as a fuel tanker arrives at Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip August 15, 2018. “The Palestinian Authority threatened the transportation company workers,"deputy head of Hamas’s “Political Department” said. A senior Hamas official on Saturday revealed that Israel had agreed to help solve the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip, but the Palestinian Authority was hindering efforts to improve the situation there. Essam Aldalis, deputy head of Hamas’s “Political Department,” said that Qatar has paid for the fuel need to keep the power plants in the Gaza Strip running. He said that the money was sent to the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). “Israel agreed to the pumping of the fuel to the power plan in the Gaza Strip,” Aladils said on Twitter. “The Pales...

Palestine Denounces Action Against UN Agency in Jerusalem By gowidenews, Oct 6 Report reaching us says, The Palestinian Ministry of Education denounced today the Israeli plans to end the services of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem. The ministry said in a statement that UNRWA operates seven schools in East Jerusalem that serve 1,800 students, as well as vocational training centers, playgrounds and health clinics. The ministry warned of serious consequences in the lives of Palestinian refugees in the city if the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem goes ahead and closes the operations of the UN agency. The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, said last Friday that he is considering ending UNRWA´s presence in the city, and handing over his services to the municipality's authorities. This decision is part of an aggressive campaign launched by the Israeli occupation to Judaize Jerusalem and erase its Palesti...

Women Are Retreating From Public Life In Iraq After Several High-Profile Murders “All women entering public life are targets,” one Iraqi activist told BuzzFeed News. By gowidenews, October 6, 2018, at 9:16 a.m.  Report reaching us says, On Monday, Oct. 1, 2018, fans of slain former beauty queen, fashion model and social media star Tara Fares pray and light candles at her gravesite A week after the murder of Tara Fares, former Miss Baghdad and Iraq’s 6th most followed person on social media, Shimaa Qasim posted a tearful video on Instagram. “We are not even like chicken,” Qasim — who has 2.7 million followers on Instagram — said, after she was told she would meet the “same fate” as Fares. “Chicken are not slaughtered like that.” youtube.com As the news was announced on Friday that Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi who was tortured and raped by Islamic State militants, had won the Nobel Peace Prize for a campaign against sexual violence, young women in Iraq are ...

The US-China Cold War Has Begun By gowidenews 14:22 pm Report reaching us says, Vice President Pence’s speech to the Hudson Institute Thursday has been widely portrayed in the global press as an official declaration that the world’s two largest economies are engaged in a “New Cold War.” It’s hard to read it any other way. The origin of the term “Cold War” is generally credited to George Orwell, who used it in a trenchant 1945 essay pondering the geo-strategic implications of the atomic bomb. The existence of a weapon so destructive, Orwell predicted, would put an end to overt shooting wars between great powers, and replace them instead with endless below-the-brink hostilities: espionage, subterfuge, influence-peddling, propaganda, and proxy wars. Conflict would stop short of direct combat—but drag on across many fronts without resolution; the bomb’s legacy, he warned, would be a “peace that is no peace.” That proved a prescient description of the rivalry between the US and the...

Boeing awarded $242 million for 17 AH-64E Apache helicopters for UAE Contract includes remanufacture of eight Apaches and nine new-build aircraft By gowidenews, October 6, 2018 Report reaching us says, The U.S. Army has awarded Boeing a $242 million contract modification to provide new and remanufactured Apache AH-64E helicopters to the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a release. The modification will cover the remanufacture of eight Apaches and nine new-build aircraft, the Friday, October 5 release said. The total cost is $242,109,170. The contract (W58RGZ-16-C-0023) was first awarded in March 2016 and has a potential value of $7.3 billion over its lifetime. Work will be performed in Mesa, Arizona, with an estimated completion date of February 28, 2023. AH-64E Guardian Boeing describes the AH-64 Apache as “the world’s most advanced multi-role combat helicopter.” It has a wingspan of 17.15 feet (5.2m) and can climb at more than 2,000 feet pe...

By gowidenews, Oct. 06 Report reaching us says,   Moscowcalled on UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to intensify efforts and help Syrian refugees return to their regions in Syria after liberating them from terrorism. “Moscow hopes that UNHCR and other international bodies would intensify their efforts to help Syrian refugees return to their home,” Russian foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. It added the return of refugees became possible after the victories of the Syrian army supported by Russian air force. The statement said Russia supposes that the return of refugees will allow them to join the process of reconstruction in the country.

Russian-Spanish consortium participates in Egypt's Dabaa nuclear project.  By gowidenews , Saturday 6 Oct 2018 Report reaching us says, Egypt's Minister of State for Military Production Mohamed El-Assar attended on Saturday the signing ceremony of a memorandum of understanding between the National Authority for Military Production and the Proton Technologies consortium on cooperation for manufacturing systems of pipelines used in the set-up of nuclear stations. The consortium groups together the Russian Tubes 2000 company and the Spanish Tubacex company, said El-Assar in a press statement. Under the deal, both sides will cooperate in the manufacturing of key components needed for making the pipelines systems that will be used in the implementation of Dabaa nuclear station, he added. Expected to be completed within 12 years, the Dabaa nuclear plant will be the largest Russian-Egyptian project since the construction of the High Dam in the 1960s. The deal comes withi...

Turkey behind Terrorists' Delay in Leaving Al-Tanf. TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkey has played a role in delaying the implementation of a Russian-US agreement to evacuate the militants from al-Tanf region at the borders between Iraq and Syria, Russian media said on Saturday. The Arabic-language website of Sputnik news agency quoted an informed source as saying that Turkey is behind the delay in transferring all terrorist groups from al-Tanf region and al-Rakban camp to Northern Syria to pave the ground for civilians' return to their villages and towns. He added that the Turkish side has not yet fully accepted to transfer the US-backed terrorist groups, including al-Qoryatayn, Maqawir al-Thawra and Ahmad al-Abdou, stationed in al-Tanf to regions in Northern Syria. Based on the report, Turkey wants to shelter the foreign terrorist groups, including Turkistani, Turkaman, and other militants who consider themselves as remnants of the Ottoman government in Northern Syria and prevent t...

With CPEC, Pakistan risks Chinese anger by courting Saudi Arabia BY gowidenews 6 Oct 2018 Report reaching us says, The Khan administration is making political hay with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor – including efforts to reduce potential IMF loans and avoid becoming the focus of a confrontation between the US and China. Since 2015, Beijing has insisted that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the showcase project of President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, is purely an economic programme – as its name suggests. Apparently, the new Pakistani administration of Prime Minister Imran Khan did not receive the memo. In the space of a couple of weeks, it has taken two decisions which have cast the CPEC as a bargaining chip in Pakistan’s complicated, ill-managed relationships with other key partners. First, it has suddenly reduced the potential value of the CPEC programme to US$50 billion by 2030, down from US$62 billion. In one fell swoop, it decided to st...

Iceland faces new challenge, 10 years on  1 Slowdown: A tourist in the popular Blue Lagoon. While the number of visitors rose nearly 40pc in 2016, the increase was only 24pc in 2017 2 Slowdown: A tourist in the popular Blue Lagoon. While the number of visitors rose nearly 40pc in 2016, the increase was only 24pc in 2017 Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir and Nick Rigillo. By gowidenews October 6 2018 2:30 AM Report reaching us says, Just as Iceland looks back at a decade of recovery since its financial and economic collapse, it is once again grappling with an existential challenge for one of its key industries. Tourism and the foreign cash it provides was instrumental in digging the 340,000-person nation out of its deep hole. Now, the industry is cooling fast and problems are mounting for its airlines after years of rapid expansion. Rewind to 10 years ago, and a similar tale could be told about the nation's banks. Arion Bank, in a report called 'Tourism in Iceland: Soft...

Report of China spy chips adds pressure on Pentagon cloud bidders Originally published October 5, 2018 at 4:55 pm Updated October 5, 2018 at 6:26 pm  By gowidenews. A report reaching us says that China sneaked spy chips onto servers used by U.S. companies increases pressure on the Pentagon, as well as on Amazon and other bidders for a big defense contract, to step up measures to secure their systems. Tech providers vying for a $10 billion Defense Department cloud-computing contract may come under added pressure to prove their systems are secure after a report that China sneaked spy chips onto servers used by U.S. companies, including Amazon, a top contender for the Pentagon award. Amazon, the market leader in cloud-computing services, was among almost 30 companies, including Apple, whose servers were infiltrated, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report based on a dozen sources in the government and private sector. Apple, Amazon, server component seller Super Micro ...