Data from energy analytics firm Kpler showed that more than 500 million barrels of crude oil and condensate have been wiped off the global market since the crisis began in late February, making it the largest energy supply disruption in modern history.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi, on Friday said the Strait of Hormuz had been reopened after a ceasefire agreement reached in Lebanon.

However, tensions escalated again on Saturday as Tehran warned it could shut the strategic waterway if the United States sustains its blockade of Iranian ports.

Also, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed optimism that a deal to end the conflict could be reached “soon,” although he did not provide a definite timeline.

Analysts warned that the scale of disruption could have prolonged effects on global energy stability, with shocks expected to linger for months or even years.

Providing context, Principal Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, Iain Mowat, said the 500 million barrels lost is equivalent to grounding global aviation demand for 10 weeks, halting all road transport worldwide for 11 days, or shutting down the entire global oil supply for five days.

Further estimates showed that the lost volume is nearly equal to one month of oil demand in the United States or more than a month’s supply for Europe. It also represents about six years of fuel consumption by the U.S. military and could power global shipping activities for approximately four months.

The crisis has significantly affected oil-producing nations in the Gulf, with output losses reaching about eight million barrels per day in March—roughly equivalent to the combined production of two of the world’s largest oil companies.

Jet fuel exports from major producers, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, dropped sharply from 19.6 million barrels in February to just 4.1 million barrels recorded across March and April combined. Analysts said the shortfall could have powered about 20,000 round-trip international flights.

With crude prices averaging around $100 per barrel since the onset of the conflict, the lost volumes translate to an estimated $50bn in revenue. Experts noted that this figure is equivalent to about one per cent of Germany’s annual Gross Domestic Product, or roughly the size of the economies of smaller European countries.

Meanwhile, global onshore crude inventories have declined by about 45 million barrels in April alone, while total production outages have risen to approximately 12 million barrels per day since late March.

Industry experts cautioned that unless a lasting resolution is reached, the disruption could intensify volatility in global oil markets, worsen inflationary pressures, and further strain fragile economies worldwide.

The post Iran War Disrupts Oil Supply, Global Loss Hits $50bn first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Iran War Disrupts Oil Supply, Global Loss Hits $50bn appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.

The toll includes at least 82 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 79,061 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7.

The post Israel-Palestine Conflict Claims 35,173 Lives first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Israel-Palestine Conflict Claims 35,173 Lives appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.

Israel has defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting “targeted raids” in the border city, which it says is home to Hamas’s last remaining battalions — but is also crowded with displaced Palestinian civilians.

AFP journalists reported heavy shelling in Rafah early Thursday, and the Israeli military later said it was also striking “Hamas positions” further north in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop US weapons supplies to Israel if it pushed ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used… to deal with the cities,” Biden said. “We’re not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used.”

On Tuesday, Israel forces seized Rafah’s border crossing into Egypt, which has served the main entry point for aid into besieged Gaza.

The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries at the time, and the secretary of defence later confirmed Washington had paused, for the time being, a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel after it failed to address concerns over its Rafah ground incursion.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” Biden said in his interview. “It’s just wrong.”

He insisted, however, that the United States was “not walking away from Israel’s security”.

The United States, along with Egypt and Cairo, has been heavily involved in talks currently under way in Cairo aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the seven-month war.

– ‘Extreme fear’ –

The Israeli military said Wednesday it was reopening another major aid crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, as well as the Erez crossing.

But the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the Kerem Shalom crossing — which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday — remained closed.

Late Wednesday, the army said a soldier was lightly wounded when Kerem Shalom was again targeted by rockets.

The heavy shelling in Rafah overnight into Thursday followed a day of what the Israeli military said were “targeted raids on the Gazan side of Rafah crossing”, in the city’s east.

An army statement later on Wednesday said that Hamas naval commander Mohammed Ahmed Ali was killed in an air strike “in the past day”. Hamas did not immediately comment.

Civilian life in Rafah, meanwhile, “has completely ceased”, said displaced Gazan Marwan al-Masri, 35, noting “the streets are empty” in the western part of the city.

“We are living in Rafah in extreme fear and endless anxiety,” said Muhanad Ahmad Qishta, 29.

“Places the Israeli army claims to be safe are also being bombed,” he told AFP.

– ‘Catastrophic’ health situation –

An emergency doctor working in Rafah and nearby Khan Yunis said that with humanitarian access compromised, the health situation was “catastrophic”.

“The smell of sewage is rife everywhere,” said the doctor, James Smith. “It’s been getting worse over the course of the last couple of days.”

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that hospitals in southern Gaza had only “three days of fuel left” because of the border closures.

“Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop.”

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel in response vowed to crush Hamas and launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,844 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Militants also took about 250 hostages. Israel estimates 128 of them remain in Gaza, including 36 who officials say are dead.

– Truce talks –

Talks involving Qatari, US and Hamas delegations aimed at cementing a long-stalled ceasefire deal were ongoing Wednesday in Cairo, said Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence.

It noted that there were “points of contention” during the discussions, but also reported some “convergence” without elaborating.

A senior Hamas official said the latest round of negotiations would be “decisive”.

Hamas “insists on the rightful demands of its people”, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly about the negotiations.

In Jerusalem, CIA director Bill Burns met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the “possibility of Israel pausing the operation in Rafah in exchange for hostage releases”, an Israeli official said, also on condition of anonymity.

The Hamas official had previously warned the Cairo talks would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the hostages still in militants’ hands.

Mediator Qatar also appealed “for urgent international action to prevent Rafah from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed”.

Palestinian analyst Mkhaimar Abusada said Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing could be an attempt to create new facts on the ground, or a bid to “sabotage the truce talks”.

Israel’s seizure of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing came after Hamas said it had accepted a truce proposal — one Israel said was “far” from what its own negotiators had previously agreed to.

Netanyahu has described the Rafah operation as “a very important step” in denying Hamas “a passage that was essential for establishing its reign of terror”.

The post Biden Vows Arms Suspension as Israel Shells Rafah first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Biden Vows Arms Suspension as Israel Shells Rafah appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.

Israel has been pounding the tiny Palestinian territory since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7 and, according to Israeli officials, killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

Since then, more than 8,000 people have been killed, half of them children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, an impoverished strip of land which is home to 2.4 million people.

“The crimes of the Zionist regime have crossed the red lines, and this may force everyone to take action,” Raisi said on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

“Washington asks us to not do anything, but they keep giving widespread support to Israel,” he said.

“The US sent messages to the Axis of Resistance but received a clear response on the battlefield,” he said, using a term often used by Iranian officials to refer to the Islamic republic and its allies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Huthis and other Shiite forces in Iraq and Syria.

Although it was not immediately clear what he was referring to, there have been a string of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria as well as increasing exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon border since the Gaza conflict began.

Iran, which financially and militarily backs Hamas, hailed the October 7 attacks as a “success”.

But it has insisted it was not involved in the onslaught, during which 230 people were also taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

“Iran considers it its duty to support the resistance groups, but … the resistance groups are independent in their opinion, decision, and action,” the Iranian president said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, according to excerpts released by state news agency IRNA.

“The United States knows very well our current capabilities and knows that they are impossible to overcome,” he said.

The post Iran Warns Israel, Says Actions ‘May Force Everyone’ To Act first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Iran Warns Israel, Says Actions ‘May Force Everyone’ To Act appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.

That was the blunt assessment of UN Special Representative to Libya, Ghassan Salamé,  who also heads the UNSMIL Support Mission, briefing the Security Council on Tuesday, following weeks of intensifying conflict in and around the outskirts of Tripoli, instigated by the self-styled Libyan National Army forces of General Khalif Haftar who also leads a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Mr. Salamé said grimly, that he had spent two years hoping to avoid having to deliver such a bleak in-person briefing to the Council, noting there were already 460 dead – 29 civilians – since the offensive began in early April. More than 2,400 have been injured, and 75,000 forced from their homes, the majority civilians, with half of the displaced women and children.

Violence began on the eve of an UN-backed National Conference planned to bring more than 150 representatives together from across the country, which had to be postponed. “There was great public excitement about what the conference could yield” said the top UN official, “in terms of a way forward to end Libya’s eight-year long period of transition” which threw him “into the deepest level of sadness for the opportunity lost”.

Tripoli violence could spark ‘long and bloody war’ across region

“I am no Cassandra” he added, referencing the mythical Greek figure who uttered prophesies which nobody believed, “but the violence on the outskirts of Tripoli is just the start of a long and bloody war…imperilling the security of Libya’s immediate neighbours and the wider Mediterranean”.

Mr. Salamé noted that in southern Libya, terrorist group Daesh, or ISIL, was flying its distinctive black flags, and reportedly had been responsible for four attacks, killing a total of 17, with more than 10 wounded, and eight others kidnapped, since Libya’s militias turned their guns on each other this year, not the common extremist threat.

“There are numerous reports of extremists, persons under international sanctions, and individuals wanted by the International Criminal Court appearing on the battlefield on all sides. All parties must publicly disassociate themselves from such elements without delay and refer to the ICC those for whom arrest warrants have been issued”, he said.

He bemoaned the flow of weapons back into the country noting “many countries” were providing arms to all sides. “Without a robust enforcement mechanism, the arms embargo into Libya will be come a cynical joke. Some nations are fuelling this bloody conflict; the United Nations should put an end to it”, he added.

Turning to the humanitarian needs he said health facilities were struggling to cope, with 11 ambulances “directly hit” by airstrikes, rockets and shelling. “I am appalled by the apparent disregard for the due protection of personnel engaging in vital medical tasks”, he noted, expressing deep concern for the rise in abductions, disappearances and arbitrary arrests in the past 6 weeks. He called on the Council’s “unequivocal support” in applying International Humanitarian Law.

UN remains ‘alongside the Libyan people’

Mr. Salamé said despite scaling-down non-essential UN staff in Tripoli and Benghazi, “we remain in Libya alongside the Libyan people to deliver as best we can”, with over 42,000 receiving aid so far. He said through local democratic elections held since 30 March, the people were showing their stoical resolve too, saying it was “vital to keep the pilot light of democracy alive”, and appealed for Council support to “the municipal election process.”

“There is no military solution” he reiterated, “and it is high time for those who have harboured this illusion to open their eyes and adjust themselves to this reality. Libya’s mosaic of communities cannot be governed without alliances and relationships stretching across the whole country”. He said Libyans would need to adjust in light of the attempts to take Tripoli by force since 4 April.

“A better future is still possible, but we all must be seized with the fierce urgency of now, while the front lines remain on the outskirts of Tripoli, and before the battle moves, God forbid, to the capital’s more densely populated neighbourhoods. This will require concerted and immediate action by the international community”.

He concluded with a call for the Council to act immediately, in support of politics over any military solution. “Full civil war in Libya is not inevitable. It may occur by the will of some parties, and by the inaction of others. I hear Libyans resigning themselves to a conflict of many months or even many years. My duty, and

that of this family of nations, is to tell them: ‘No. You need to stop the fighting and stop it now, for the sake of your loved ones, for the sake of your country, and for the sake of international peace and security.”

The post Libya on verge of civil war, threatening ‘permanent division’ first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Libya on verge of civil war, threatening ‘permanent division’ appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.

Ekweremadu woke up to a siege on his residence.

A similar siege was carried out on the home of Senate President, Bukola Saraki.

In a statement on Wednesday, Uche Anichukwu, media aide to Ekeweramdu, quoted the deputy senate president as calling on Nigerians to condemn the incident.

He said for over six hours, a combined team of policemen, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other agencies prevented him from leaving his house.

“On Tuesday morning, some people laid siege to my house. They left at about 12:20pm after spending about six and half hours,” the statement read.

“We anticipated that a number of our colleagues in All Progressives Congress (APC) would defect and join People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In anticipation of that, the APC leadership had tried to stop them. When that didn’t happen, the first thing they did was invite President of the Senate to come to the Police. They believed that once the President of the Senate goes to the Police, I would be the one to preside and probably give effect to the letter of defection.

“In anticipation of that, the Police, EFCC, and other security agencies came together, about 200 of them, to stop me from going to the national assembly. They said I should come to the EFCC to give explanation over the things I was accused of. I agreed to follow them even though there was no prior invitation, but they were not eager to let me go to answer the invitation.

“The plan was to stop me and the president of the senate from going to the national assembly today. Unfortunately for them, the president of the senate was already at the senate to preside over the plenary session.

“This is not good for democracy. We must respect the law, respect institutions because that is the only way we can make progress as a nation. This is total embarrassment to our nation. I hope this will not happen again.

“I am very worried. This is a decline in our democracy. I want to call on the media and Nigerians to stand up for Nigeria and ensure we save our democracy.

“This is a dangerous development. The whole world expects Nigeria to lead in democracy in Africa. We need to make progress and show the world that Nigerians are indeed leaders in every aspect of life.

“When you invade the national assembly, you are invading the temple of democracy. That is exactly what has happened today. This is a major assault on democracy.

“Those advising the president should advise him correctly. As a result of this occurrence, senate had to go on recess when there are outstanding issues to attend to. Nigerians are loosing. Whoever is behind this is not a good friend of Nigeria.”

The post Ekweremadu recounts how he was held hostage by 200 security operatives, war first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Ekweremadu recounts how he was held hostage by 200 security operatives, war appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.

The EFCC chief said this at an interactive session with media executives in Abuja on Wednesday.

“The way we are going we have already failed. I am telling you we have almost failed. It is almost lost. The battle against corruption is not only evil, it is a poison,” he said.‎

However, he disclosed that the commission recovered about N409 billion between January and August, and that it secured 137 convictions nationwide within this period.

“Between January and August 30, 2017, the EFCC recovered N409,270,706,686.75; $69,501,156.67; 231,118.69 Pounds; 610,816.20 Euros; Dirham 443,400.00 and 70,500.00 Saudi Riyal,” he said.

“Over a month ago, the commission recovered over N329billion from a group of oil marketers for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.”

Magu also expressed the resolve of the anti-graft agency to remain unrelenting in the fight against corruption.

“In the area of prosecution of cases in court, we are also making progress despite the antics of some persons accused of grand corruption to delay trial,” he said.

He urged the media to see themselves as partners in progress, saying the EFCC alone cannot win the war against corruption.

“From what we read in the papers these days, it is either somebody is fighting Magu or Magu is fighting other people,” he said.

“But seriously speaking, instead of fighting ourselves, we should be united in fighting the common enemy, which is corruption.”

The EFCC chief also said he had no personal grouse with anyone, explaining that “I am not after anybody and have no issues with anybody. Those who think they have issues with me will soon discover that I mean no harm”.

“What drives me is the passion to do what is right by ensuring that we fight corruption to a standstill in this country.”

The post We have failed in the war against corruption, says Magu first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post We have failed in the war against corruption, says Magu appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.