Every Wednesday, the Sifter posts top-line summaries to current events around the globe. All news articles are from Reuters and BBC News.


Floods force mass evacuations in Queensland, Australia [BBC News]

- North-eastern Australia’s worst flooding in decades is continuing to cause chaos across the region. About 1,000 people in Queensland have been evacuated, including the entire population of the town of Theodore. The government has declared Theodore and two other towns in the region to be disaster zones, and forecasters say the floods have not yet peaked. The cost of the damage is expected to top AU$1bn ($1.013bn US), including massive losses of sunflower and cotton crops
- The town’s river has risen more than 50cm (1.6ft) above its previous recorded high, Emergency Management Queensland spokesman Bruce O’Grady told Australia’s ABC News. Theodore farmer Keith Shoecraft told the BBC that vast areas of farmland were under water
- Two of Australia’s biggest coal export terminals – Dalrymple Bay and Gladstone Ports – together with Australia’s top coal transporter QR National said they were cutting back on operations while the floods persisted. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third-largest mining company, declared “force majeure” at four Queensland coal mines allowing it to miss deliveries because of circumstances beyond its control

Ivory Coast: African trio to make fresh peace bid [BBC News]

- Three West African leaders will return to Ivory Coast next week for more negotiations to end the impasse over last month’s disputed elections. Cape Verde’s president, one of the delegation, made the comment after they failed to persuade incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo to stand down. They had hoped Mr Gbagbo would agree to cede power to Alassane Ouattara, widely considered to be the true winner
- The presidents of Benin, Sierra Leone and Cape Verde had travelled to the main city, Abidjan, as representatives of Ecowas. The three men are now in Nigeria to brief the chairman of Ecowas, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. Their visit was being seen as a final chance to urge Mr Gbagbo to peacefully cede to Mr Ouattara – who is currently holed up in a hotel in the city protected by around 800 UN peacekeepers
- Gbagbo has accused the UN – which has some 9,500 peacekeepers in the country – of interfering in Ivorian affairs and has ordered it to leave. The UN has refused to do so. It says at least 173 people have died in violence and scores of others have been tortured since the 28 November elections. Violence broke out after Mr Ouattara’s victory was overturned by the Constitutional Council, a body headed by an ally of Mr Gbagbo, citing claims that results were rigged in the north

China will cut rare earths export quotas [BBC News]

- China has said it will cut exports of rare earth minerals by 10% in 2011. World manufacturers are heavily reliant on China for these minerals, which are essential for making many electronic goods, such as TVs and PC monitors. China has 97% of the world’s known supply of the goods. The US mined none last year
- Rare earth minerals have been a thorny trade topic for some time, and China has previously promised not to cut supplies drastically. Rare earths are a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table: scandium, yttrium, and some fifteen lanthanides
- The US last week said it was “very concerned about China’s export restraints on rare earth materials, antimony and tungsten” and could still file a case on that at the World Trade Organisation. In September, China blocked exports of rare earths to Japan after a territorial row but later resumed them. There uses also include the manufacture of wind turbines and hybrid cars

Oil tops $91 as U.S. crude inventories seen off [Reuters]

- Oil rose on Tuesday, approaching two-year highs set a day earlier, on expectations weekly U.S. data will show another draw in crude stockpiles as companies reduce inventories for year-end tax considerations. U.S. crude stockpiles fell 19 million barrels over the previous three weeks, the largest three-week drop since 1998
- Oil has rallied 35 percent from lows struck in May, and is up roughly 15 percent from the end of 2009. A rally across financial markets took hold in earnest around September, spurred by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s latest round of quantitative easing, a weakened dollar and rising demand
- The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, some of whose members also belong to OPEC, met in Cairo at the weekend, when leading exporter Saudi Arabia reiterated its preference for a $70-$80 price range. Others said $100 would be fair and the global economy could withstand it

Cuba commutes sentence of last death row inmate [BBC News]

- Cuba’s Supreme Tribunal has commuted the sentence of the country’s last death row inmate, a rights group has said. Humberto Eladio Real, a 40-year-old Cuban American, was convicted of killing a man in 1994 during an attempted insurgency raid. The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation commuted his sentence to 30 years in prison
- Cuba’s last executions were in 2003, when three people convicted of attempting to hijack a boat to escape to the United States were killed by firing squad. Two years ago, within a month of taking over the presidency from his brother Fidel, Raul Castro issued a decree lifting the death sentence for 30 prisoners
- In a groundbreaking deal brokered by the Roman Catholic church, Mr Castro has also agreed to free the 52 most prominent political prisoners on the island. The majority are now with the families in Spain, but 11 are refusing to go into exile and have yet to be released, says the BBC’s Michael Voss in Havana

Venezuela arrests more than 12,000 for drug crimes [Reuters]

- Venezuela has detained 12,376 people for drug-related crimes this year, about 40 percent more than in 2009, as the South American nation continues to be a major shipment route, authorities said on Monday. Venezuela’s government says the figures show the success of its anti-narcotics policy. But the figures also illustrate that Venezuela remains an important route for drugs — mainly from Colombia — to reach consumers in Europe and the United States
- Some 24.6 tonnes of cocaine were confiscated this year, down from 27.7 tonnes in 2009. But the amount of marijuana confiscated rose to 38.4 tonnes from 32.6 tonnes last year. Cocaine and marijuana account for nearly all the drugs found
- Accused by critics of leniency in the drug fight and of collusion with Colombian rebels who depend on smuggling for financing, President Hugo Chavez’s government counters that it has stepped up interdiction notably in recent years. The socialist leader, who is Washington’s fiercest critic in the region, stopped cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in 2005 amid bilateral tensions

Strike over massive Bolivia fuel price rises begins [BBC News]

- Transport workers in Bolivia have begun an indefinite strike, called in protest at an increase of more than 70% in the price of fuel. Commuters struggled to reach the main cities, and army lorries were used to help people get to work
- The Bolivian government withdrew its heavy subsidies for petrol and diesel on Sunday, saying it was not prepared to keep fuel prices artificially low. It said much of Bolivia’s oil was being smuggled out of the country
- Fuel prices in the impoverished South American country, which had been frozen for almost a decade, will now rise by 73% for low-octane petrol and 83% for diesel. The government has said it will compensate for the fuel price rise by increasing public sector wages and freezing utility bills. But the sudden embracing of free market principles will be a tough test of support for the country’s left-wing President Evo Morales

MPs file ‘no co-operation’ motion against Kuwait ruler [BBC News]

- Opposition MPs in Kuwait have filed a motion of “no co-operation” against the prime minister, in a bid to force him from office. The motion against Prime Minister Sheik Nasser Al Mohammed Al Sabah will be voted on 5 January, the speaker said. The move comes after a meeting where opposition lawmakers questioned his response to a recent public rally
- Opposition lawmakers need a majority of the 50-seat parliament to pass the motion against Sheikh Nasser, who is a member of Kuwait’s royal family. If passed, the matter would then be referred to the emir of the oil-rich Gulf state, who would decide whether to sack the prime minister or dissolve the parliament and call for new elections
- Sheikh Nasser, a nephew of the emir, has been under constant political pressure ever since he became prime minister in February 2006. Since then, the cabinet has resigned five times and the ruler has dissolved parliament three times. Kuwait was the first Arab state in the Gulf to usher in parliamentary democracy

Groupon files to raise up to $950 million [Reuters]

- Groupon Inc, the fast-growing online coupon seller, has been authorized to raise up to $950 million in what would be the biggest round of equity financing by any company since Pixar in 1995. The company said in filing with the state of Delaware that it intended to sell shares at $31.59 each
- That price would value Groupon at between $6.4 billion and $7.8 billion, depending on the number of shares issued, according to VC Experts, a research firm that specializes in providing data on private companies. Groupon, with annual revenue said to range from $500 million to $2 billion, sends members daily e-mails with steeply discounted deals from local merchants. The deals are activated when a certain number of people agree to make a purchase
- Described by some as the fastest-growing Internet start-up in history, Groupon’s backers include Digital Sky Technologies, which also is an investor in Facebook. The move for new funding comes a month after reports that Groupon was in talks to sell itself to Google Inc for up to $6 billion. Google’s shares fell on those reports amid concern the web advertising company would be overpaying

Assange memoir to give full details of WikiLeaks [Reuters]

- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s new memoir will give a full account of his life and the secretive group that has leaked large amounts of documents, U.S. publisher Alfred A. Knopf said on Monday. Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards said Assange and the publishing house reached a deal for his autobiography “just before the holiday” and that a manuscript was expected to be delivered in 2011
- Assange told The Sunday Times newspaper in Britain that he agreed to book deals due to financial pressures from legal issues. The deals would bring in $800,000 from Knopf and another $500,000 from British publisher Canongate, both part of the Random House stable owned by Bertelsmann AG. “I don’t want to write this book, but I have to,” Assange told the Times, citing a growing legal bill that has reached more than $308,000. “I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.”
- Assange’s memoir would come hard on the heels of a volume from his former second-in-command Daniel Domscheit-Berg, whose “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World’s Most Dangerous Website” is set to tell the story of the site. The book is due out from German publisher Econ Verlag in January

More than 7,000 flights have been cancelled along the eastern seaboard, throwing the travel plans of thousands of people into chaos. The monitors at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, were bringing bad news to many.


via North-east US struggles for normality after blizzards [BBC News]

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