Authorities in eastern Libya have announced a conference in March to drum up support to rebuild the country’s second-largest city Benghazi heavily damaged during three years of fighting between military forces and Islamist fighters.

The announcement signals a desire to demonstrate a return to normality in the port, where top military commander Khalifa Haftar declared the end of a campaign to oust Islamist fighters in July.

Clashes have sporadically continued in some isolated areas, while life has returned in the rest of the city, though some districts were almost completely destroyed by shelling and air strikes.

A forum titled “International Conference and Exhibition for rebuilding Benghazi city” will be held from March 19-21, the organizers said in an invitation posted online, adding that a six-day exhibition would be held the same month.

Haftar is aligned with a government and parliament in eastern Libya which was listed as the conference’s sponsor.

He has rejected a U.N.-backed government based in the capital, Tripoli, as he has gradually strengthened his position on the ground.

The United Nations has sought to bridge differences between the two sides, part of a conflict since Muammar Gadhafi was toppled in 2011. Talks were suspended in October.
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From: MeNeedIt

Oil moved higher above $65 a barrel on Tuesday, within sight of its highest since mid-2015, supported by an explosion on a crude pipeline in Libya and voluntary OPEC-led supply cuts.

The move towards restart of a key North Sea pipeline, Forties, capped the rally. The pipeline is being tested after repairs and full flows should resume in early January, its operator said on Monday.

Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose 19 cents to $65.44 a barrel at 1447 GMT. Prices hit $65.83 on December 12, the highest since June 2015. U.S. crude added 24 cents to $58.71.

“The confirmation that Forties is coming back … has the potential for capping Brent,” said Olivier Jakob, analyst at Petromatrix.

Trading activity was thin due to the Christmas holiday in many countries.

Oil turned positive following the explosion at the Libyan pipeline, which feeds the Es Sider terminal. It was not immediately clear what impact the blast will have on Libyan output, which has been recovering in recent months after being hampered for years by conflict and unrest.

Brent has risen 17 percent in 2017. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and other non-members, have been withholding output since January 1 to get rid of a glut.

The producers have extended the supply cut agreement to cover all of 2018.

Iraq’s oil minister said on Monday there would be a balance between supply and demand by the first quarter, leading to a boost in prices. Global oil inventories have decreased to an acceptable level, he added.

That is earlier than predicted in OPEC’s latest official forecast, which calls for a balanced market by late 2018.

While the OPEC action has lent support to prices all year, the unplanned shutdown of the Forties pipeline on December 11 pushed Brent to its mid-2015 high.

Forties plays an important role in the global market as it is the biggest of the five North Sea crude streams underpinning Brent, the benchmark for oil trading in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Rising production in the United States is offsetting some of the OPEC-led cuts.

The U.S. rig count, RIG-OL-USA-BHI, an early indicator of future output, held at 747 in the week to December 22, according to the latest weekly report by Baker Hughes.
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From: MeNeedIt

Sudan is to devalue its currency to 18 Sudanese pounds per dollar in January from the current exchange rate of 6.7, the finance minister said on Tuesday.

The International Monetary Fund urged Sudan earlier this month to float its currency to boost growth and investment, but the government has ruled out a market-determined exchange rate.

The devaluation which includes the customs exchange rate — the rate used to calculate customs duties —  is timed to take place when the 2018 budget begins, in the first week of January, Finance Minister Mohamed Othman Rukabi told Reuters.

Traders said the black market rate jumped to 27 SDG per dollar from 25 SDG per dollar on Tuesday after the devaluation was announced.

“The whole budget for the new year is based on a an official rate of 18 SDG per dollar. We expect the results of this policy to be positive for the Sudanese economy,” he said.

The Sudanese pound has weakened sharply against the dollar since Washington lifted 20-year-old economic sanctions in October, encouraging traders to step up imports and putting pressure on scarce hard currency.

Businesses are unable to secure their hard currency needs at the official peg of 6.7 pounds to the dollar and are forced to resort to a parallel market.

To stem the flow of scarce currency out of the banking system, Sudan announced emergency measures last month after the pound fell to a record low of 27 against the dollar on the black market.

The country also imposed tight restrictions on imports of luxury goods, directing remaining liquidity toward “sectors that boost growth,” the central bank said.

The import-dependent country has suffered both from the sanctions and from the secession of the south in 2011, when it lost three-quarters of its oil output, its main source of foreign currency.

The IMF last year agreed to loan Sudan’s neighbur Egypt $12 billion if it implemented tough fiscal reforms.

Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Nadine Awadalla and John Davison; Editing by Robin Pomeroy.
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From: MeNeedIt

Actress Heather Menzies-Urich, who played one of the singing von Trapp children in the 1965 hit film, “The Sound of Music,” has died. She was 68.

Her son, actor Ryan Urich, told Variety that his mother died late Sunday in Frankford, Ontario, Canada. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

Menzies-Urich played Louisa von Trapp, the third-oldest of the seven von Trapp children in the film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

“The Sound of Music” captured five Academy Awards, including best picture.

Variety reports that Menzies-Urich is survived by two other children, several grandchildren and a great grandchild.

Her husband, actor Robert Urich, died in 2002.
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From: MeNeedIt

Many Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh facing diminished income are supplementing their needs with work in the camps. Steve Sandford talks to a few young and old entrepreneurs who have set up new businesses in the refugee zones.
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From: MeNeedIt

Israel’s markets regulator said on Monday he will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE).

Shmuel Hauser, the chairman of the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), told the Calcalist business conference he will bring the proposal to the ISA board next week. If approved, it would be subject to a public hearing and then the TASE bylaws would need to be amended.

“If we have a company that their main business is digital currencies we would not allow it. If already listed, its trading will be suspended,” Hauser said, adding the ISA must find the appropriate regulation for such companies.

Bitcoin plunged by 30 percent to below $12,000 on Friday as investors dumped the cryptocurrency after its sharp rise to nearly $20,000. It recouped some losses to trade above $14,000 on the Bitstamp platform, down 9 percent on the day.

“We feel that the prices of bitcoin behave like bubbles and we don’t want investors to be subject to that volatility and uncertainty,” Hauser said. “There is an importance to signal to the market where things are… Investors should know where we stand.”

Earlier this month, Hauser had said bitcoin-based companies would not be included in TASE indexes and that there was a need for a suitable regulatory framework for such instruments given that the global market value of all digital currencies grew in 2017 to $300 billion from $18 billion.

The proposal will likely be the last for Hauser, who will step down next month after 6-1/2 years as ISA chief.

“But once it’s on its way it will continue to be pursued,” said Hauser, who will be replaced by Anat Guetta.

He said he hopes she will promote easing capital gains taxes and focus on regulatory enforcement.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The Somali Football Federation (SFF) has announced plans to host international games beginning next year because of improving security, the head of the body has announced.

President of the SFF, Abdiqani Said Arab, says the time has come for Somalia to organize home games in the country’s soccer stadiums in 2018.

“Due to the betterment of the security situation in Somalia we have decided to stage our home games at home,” Arab said in a statement.

“The Somali people have the right to watch their national team play at home and we have to make that happen now that the country is going ahead.”

Arab said his federation will first invite East African soccer national teams to play friendly matches with the Somali national team.

He said staging friendly matches will be followed by hosting regional soccer tournaments, such as the CECAFA (Council for East African and Central Africa Football). SFF has not released the dates and fixtures of international matches to be played at home for next year.

Somalia hosted its last international match in Mogadishu in 1988. Following the collapse of the state in 1991, the Somalia national soccer team was forced to play its home games abroad in a neutral country, mainly in the region, like Djibouti and Ethiopia, denying it the all-important home advantage that other teams enjoy against opponents.

The Confederation of African Football chief Ahmad Ahmad approved Somalia’s plan to host international soccer games when he visited Mogadishu in April.

Somalia soccer has made steady development over the years despite the country’s difficulties.

In April 2012, a suicide bomber killed both the head of the Somali Olympic Committee, Aden Yabarow Wiish, and the president of Somali Football Federation, Said Mohamed Nur. But in December that same year, the SFF completed installing an artificial turf at Mogadishu stadium. Two years later in December 2015, the soccer body had showed the first-ever live stream of a football game on TV.

And in August this year, it was a bright night for Mogadishu as the first soccer game was played at night in more than 30 years.
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From: MeNeedIt

The year 2017 saw amazing advances in some areas of medicine and avoidable setbacks in others. VOA’s Carol Pearson has the highs and the lows in this report.
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From: MeNeedIt

Saving digital files in commercial memory banks called cloud storage is a cheap and convenient way for long-term storage of documents, photos, music and video. Private users as well as businesses can access them from anywhere and share them with whomever they give the password to. Providers, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3, claim almost absolute security. But computer scientists say the protection should be in the users’ hands. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Management experts are always coming up with innovative ideas to improve the work environment, inspire employees and raise productivity. Big companies in Germany, like Lufthansa, Siemens, Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen’s Audi, are bringing harmony to the workplace by having symphony orchestras and encouraging employees to play music together. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

Amazon’s diligent, computerized know-it-all is the latest technology to enlist in NORAD Tracks Santa, the military-run program that fields phone calls and emails from children around the world eager to ask when Santa will arrive.

Now entering its 62nd year, NORAD Tracks Santa will go live Sunday, with about 1,500 volunteers answering calls and emails at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Updates will be posted on social media and at www.noradsanta.org.

And if you have Amazon’s voice-activated Echo device, you can ask Alexa once you enable the function.

Technology has always been at the heart of NORAD Tracks Santa, which got its start in 1955 with an old-school glitch.

An advertisement in a Colorado Springs newspaper that year invited kids to call Santa, but it mistakenly listed the number for the hotline at the U.S. Continental Air Defense Command. CONAD, as it was called, had the job of monitoring a vast radar network from a combat operations center in Colorado Springs, searching the skies for any hint of a nuclear attack by the onetime Soviet Union.

Col. Harry Shoup, who was in charge of the operations center, took the first child’s call. Once he figured out what was happening, he played along, he said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press.

“Here I am saying, ‘Ho, ho, ho, I am Santa,’” said Shoup, who died in 2009. “The crew was looking at me like I had lost it.”

He told his staff what was happening and told them to play along, too.

It’s not clear what day the first call came in, but by Friday, Dec. 23 of that first year, the AP reported that CONAD was tracking Santa.

“Note to the kiddies,” the story began, under a Colorado Springs dateline. “Santa Claus Friday was assured safe passage into the United States by the Continental Air Defense Command combat operations center here which began plotting his journey from the North Pole early this morning.”

Maybe hoping to soothe a jittery nation, the story added: ”CONAD, Army, Navy and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the U.S. against possible attack from those who do not believe in Christmas.” That was likely a reference to the officially atheist Soviet Union.

The history of the program over the next few years isn’t well documented, said Preston Schlachter, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian command that eventually succeeded CONAD.

But TV and radio stations began broadcasting Christmas Eve bulletins from CONAD and NORAD. And by the 1980s, NORAD was soliciting phone calls from children. (The number is now 877-Hi NORAD or 877-446-6723.)

NORAD added its Santa-tracking website in 1997. It went on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in 2008. Mobile apps came in 2011, Instagram in 2016.

Last year, NORAD Tracks Santa got nearly 154,200 phone calls and drew 10.7 million unique visitors to its website. It snared 1.8 million Facebook followers, 382,000 YouTube views and 177,000 Twitter followers.

And this year, Alexa joins the party.

Technology and the Santa Claus story have a long but uneasy history together, said Gerry Bowler, a Canadian historian whose books include ”Santa Claus: A Biography” and ”Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday.”

“Every new technology gets tried on Santa,” Bowler said. In the late 1800s, for example, he was depicted chatting with children on the telephone, then a new and wondrous invention.

But NORAD’s Santa tracker is one of the only technological upgrades the public has welcomed into the Santa story, Bowler said.

“I think that it will be ultimately incompatible with most technology,” Bowler said. “I’m sure of it, because he represents something timeless, and we don’t want him to become dated.

“We don’t want him using a fax machine or carrying around one of those 5-pound cellphones,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

For those interested in experiencing life on the Red Planet, the time has come. There are four operating stations in the world where the environment on Mars is replicated: in the U.S., Australia, Iceland and the Arctic. VOA’s Alex Yanevskyy was given exclusive access to the research station in the Utah dessert. Here’s his report.
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From: MeNeedIt