DUBAI (Reuters) - Lebanon s power supplies were back to normal on Sunday after a blackout the previous day when the country s two biggest power stations shut down because of a fuel shortage, the Energy Ministry said. The closure piled further hardship on Lebanese struggling with job losses, soaring prices and hunger wrought by the country s worsening financial meltdown. The ministry said it had received central bank approval for $100 million in credit to issue fuel import tenders for electricity generation, adding the country s grid had resumed supplying the same amount of electricity as before the complete outage. On Saturday, Lebanon s two largest power stations, Zahrani and Deir Ammar plants, shut down due to fuel shortages, bringing the Lebanese power network to a complete halt. The Lebanese army agreed on Saturday evening to provide 6,000 kilolitres of gas oil distributed equally between the two power stations, the state electricity company said in a statement reported by the offi
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A three-week blockade of Sudan s main port by tribal protesters is causing shortages of wheat and fuel oil for power generation, endangering the country s already faulty electricity supply, a cabinet minister said on Saturday. Tensions between Sudan s military and civilian leaders have been running high in recent weeks, and some civilian figures have accused the military of playing a role in the Beja tribe s blockade of Port Sudan, surrounding roads and fuel pipelines. Military leaders have denied any involvement, and Beja leaders say they are protesting to draw attention to economic and political issues affecting the eastern tribe. In the capital, Khartoum, queues for bread have reappeared in recent days and there have been shortages of imported flour. Minister of Cabinet Affairs Khalid Omer Yousif said in a statement the government would redistribute wheat stocks located in the country s Northern State to bolster supplies elsewhere. Diesel supplies have also been
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that 127 drivers had applied for fuel trucker visas amid an acute shortage of drivers that has strained supply chains to breaking point. Johnson told BBC TV that the haulage industry had been asked to provide the details of drivers who were willing to come to Britain, and it had only given 127 names. What that shows is the global shortage, he said. The Times newspaper reported that just 27 fuel tanker drivers had applied. With fuel companies and supermarkets warning that a shortage of drivers was hitting deliveries, the government said late last month that it would temporarily reverse its immigration rules and give 5,000 visas for EU drivers to operate in Britain. It said 300 of those could arrive immediately to drive oil tankers. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Kate Holton)
By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) -Whether the Social Democrats Olaf Scholz or a conservative becomes the next German chancellor, they will probably need to bring into their coalition two smaller parties that are far apart on many of the issues that will shape Germany s future. Any majority will rest on the Greens, led by former competitive athlete Annalena Baerbock and novelist Robert Habeck, and the business-friendly Free Democrats, led by former energy trader Christian Lindner, finding areas of agreement https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/new-besties-german-greens-fdp-cosy-up-build-coalition-2021-09-29. Christian Lindner and I are about the same age, and both he and Robert Habeck are men, joked Baerbock when asked about the seemingly scant areas of agreement between the two parties. While Baerbock s progressive environmentalists and Lindner s libertarians are further from each other than either is from the Social Democrats or the conservatives, their youthful voter bases give th
By Axel Threlfall and Timothy Gardner (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is hopeful China and the United States will set aside their differences at U.N. climate change talks in Glasgow, just as they came together in 2015 to help hammer out the Paris Agreement. Speaking in an interview broadcast on Monday at the Reuters Impact conference, Gore also said China could surprise the world by bringing forward one or both of its targets for reaching peak emissions and becoming carbon neutral. Gore said frictions between China and the United States, the world s top two greenhouse gas polluters, had to be taken into account. Beijing and Washington have clashed over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, as well as military activity in the South China Sea. But Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on informing the world about climate change, held out hope that tensions between the two could ease at the U.N. COP26 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, which sta