WORLD

The White House said Thursday that the U.S. has evidence that Iranian troops are directly engaged on the ground in Crimea supporting Russian drone attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure and civilian population. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Iran has sent a relatively small number of personnel to Crimea, a part of Ukraine unilaterally annexed by Russia in contravention of international law in 2014, to assist Russian troops in launching Iranian-made drones against Ukraine.

The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it's the Russians who are doing the piloting," Kirby said.

US crude hit the lower end of $80 per barrel Tuesday amid reports that the Biden administration planned to sell more of the nation’s emergency oil reserves to counter output cuts announced by producer alliance OPEC+ that could hurt the president and his party in elections next month.

West Texas Intermediate crude, the benchmark for U.S. crude, had surged to nearly $94 by October 10, after the production cut of 2 million barrels per day from November onwards that OPEC had announced on October 5. Prior to that, WTI had hit an 8-month low beneath $75 per barrel.

London-traded Brent oil hovered under $90 on Tuesday, after an intraday low at $88.81. Brent hit $98.75 on Oct. 10.

In Nelson Mandela Bay, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, thousands of hectares of land could one day become the world’s largest green ammonia plant.
Ammonia, which is made up of nitrogen and hydrogen, is commonly used as a fertilizer. In the early 1910s scientists devised a way to synthesize it, but before then, the main agricultural fertilizer was guano, bat or bird excrement, which had to be obtained from tropical islands and was in short supply.
Production of ammonia at an industrial scale allowed agriculture to boom, and according to a study from the University of Manitoba, without it, we wouldn’t be able to produce roughly half of the world’s food today.

As President Xi Jinping gears up to accept a third term of power, China is desperately fighting to reverse a rapid shrinkage in population, which is expected to start in 2022 and the administration fears that it will have profound ramifications for its future.

Valerio Fabbri, writing in Portal Plus, a Slovenian publication, said the demographers have predicted that the shrinking may begin in 2022 itself, a turning point that will weaken the government's economic tools which in turn could impact manufacturing, China's main economic weapon spearheading its economic supremacy in the last couple of decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that any direct contact or direct clash of NATO troops with the Russian army would lead to a "global catastrophe".

Addressing the news conference in Kazakhstan's capital Astana, Putin said, "In any case, direct contact, direct clash of (NATO) troops with the Russian army is a very dangerous move which could lead to a global catastrophe. I hope that those who are saying this are smart enough not to take such a step."

Earlier, Putin had warned that he would use nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory after annexing four regions of Ukraine last month, a move which the UN this week condemned.