Tom Miles News

About 115 people are missing and feared to have drowned and another 134 were rescued by Libyan coast guards and local fishermen after a wooden boat carrying migrants capsized off Libya, a Libyan navy official said on Thursday.Earlier, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that up to 150 people were feared dead."The worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year has just occurred," UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said in a tweet.There were about 250 people on board, mainly from Eritrea and other sub-Saharan Africa and Arab countries, when the boat capsized off the coast near Komas, east of the capital Tripoli, Libyan navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem said.Libya is a hub for migrants and refugees…

Dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe drowned in the Mediterranean on Friday and 100 more were sent back to Libya, the United Nations said, while Italian authorities signalling opposition to more migration from Africa seized a rescue ship.The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 65 people drowned when their boat capsized off Tunisia, and 101 others who had been picked up at sea were returned to Libya, despite repeated warnings that it is not a safe country to send people back to.It was one the deadliest shipwrecks involving migrants trying to reach Europe via north Africa this year.Tripoli, a hub for migrants and refugees hoping to sail to Europe after a perilous trek through the Sahara…

At least 21 Venezuelans were missing after their boat sank on the way to the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday, citing information from that country's coast guard.The boat, the “Jhonnaly Jose”, was carrying at least 25 people from the Venezuelan coastal town of Guiria when it capsized in the early hours of Wednesday, UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva."This tragic incident highlights the extreme risks of sea journeys and other irregular cross-border movements undertaken by refugees and migrants.

Japan has launched a complaint at the World Trade Organization to contest allegedly illegal financial support given by South Korea to commercial shipbuilders, according to a WTO filing published on Tuesday."The measures in question relate to the development, production, marketing, and/or sale or purchase of commercial vessels, including vessels designed to carry crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and shipping containers," Japan's complaint said.(Reuters, Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Stephanie Nebehay)

India has launched a complaint against the United States to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium, a filing published by the World Trade Organization showed on Wednesday.Indian officials told Reuters last month that their government would open a WTO dispute if the country's firms were not granted an exemption.Trump imposed the tariffs in March, levying 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminium. He said they were justified by national security concerns and therefore outside the WTO's remit.India…

The International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday that 21 migrants were missing, and had probably drowned, after two boats, a rubber dinghy and a wooden boat, set off from Libya for Italy and had to be rescued.   IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva that all 132 people on the rubber dinghy had been rescued, but 21 were missing from the 51 on the wooden boat, and two dead infants had reportedly been discovered on board, bringing the likely death toll to 23.   Reporting by Tom Miles

Twenty-two Ethiopian migrants are missing after being dumped in the sea off Yemen, the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday. IOM spokesman Joel Millman said the missing people were on one of four boats that brought 602 Ethiopian men and women to the coast of Yemen's Shabwa governorate in the past 24 hours. "We understand that passengers on the boat had been dropped into deep water and forced to swim to shore. No bodies have been recovered but 22 remain unaccounted for," Millman told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva. He gave no further details of the incident. "Despite the difficult security problems in Yemen, it's still a migrant transit point and we're still hearing about these reports pretty frequently," he said.

At least 30 African refugees and migrants drowned off the coast of Yemen this week in a boat heading towards Djibouti operated by smugglers who are reported to have fired on passengers, the United Nations said on Friday.   "Survivors of the incident have reported to U.N. and partner staff that an over-crowded boat packed with at least 152 Somalis and Ethiopians departed 23 January from the Al Buraiqa coast in Aden in a boat headed across the Gulf of Aden towards Djibouti," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. "The boat capsized amid reports of gunfire being used against the passengers." Reporting by Tom Miles

The extent of sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic last month was the lowest on record for January, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said on Friday, while concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a January record. "The missing ice in both poles has been quite extraordinary," David Carlson, director of the World Climate Research Programme, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva. "It is a quite strange situation. The month of January was probably the second or third hottest such month on record, but that was not a reliable indicator of the state of the climate, he said.

China has taken a major step towards establishing a speedy new "Silk Road" to Europe by signing up to a U.N. trucking treaty. Fifteen years after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), China is hoping a revival of its ancient trading corridor to the west will help boost its slowing economy. Becoming a member of TIR, an international guarantee scheme that will enable Chinese freight containers to travel all the way to Ireland without being opened up for time-consuming customs checks, is a first step towards putting the legal framework of the plan into action. "It's a key element ...for the Chinese government... If you had to stop a container at every border from China to Europe it would add substantial costs," said Christian Friis Bach, executive secretary of the U.N.

A U.N. resolution due for debate later on Wednesday will give North Korea a sharp choice between pursuing its own nuclear programs or re-engaging with the world and looking out for its own people, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.   Blinken compared efforts to roll back Syria's nuclear program to talks on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and said the U.N. resolution would one of the toughest ever, enforcing shipping inspections and prohibiting certain shipments, such as coal and gold exports and aviation fuel imports.   (Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay)

The World Trade Organization's Appellate Body ruled against the United States on Friday in a dispute with Mexico over tuna labelling, upholding an earlier ruling issued in April that found U.S. rules discriminated against Mexico. "The Appellate Body concludes that the United States has not brought its dolphin-safe labelling regime for tuna products into conformity with the recommendations and rulings of the (WTO's dispute settlement body)," the WTO's appeals judges said at the end of their 144-page ruling on the case. The appeal ruling is final, and could lead to Mexico making a claim for retaliation against U.S. exports if it believes the United States has not brought its rules into line with the WTO ruling.

Hurricane Patricia strengthened into one of the most powerful storms in history on Friday as it barreled toward Mexico's Pacific Coast, forcing resort hotels to evacuate tourists and residents to stockpile supplies. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the Category 5 storm was the strongest ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, and the World Meteorological Organization compared it to 2013's Typhoon Haiyan, which killed thousands in the Philippines. It was expected to make landfall on Friday afternoon or early evening, the NHC added.

The U.N. refugee agency expects the number of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe to hit 400,000 this year and could be 450,000 or more in 2016, it said in a preliminary emergency appeal document published on Tuesday. "In 2015, UNHCR anticipates that approximately 400,000 new arrivals will seek international protection in Europe via the Mediterranean. In 2016 this number could reach 450,000 or more," it said, adding that over 366,000 had already arrived in 2015. (Reporting by Tom Miles

A ship carrying enough U.N. food aid to feed 180,000 people for a month docked at the Yemeni port of Aden on Tuesday, having waited for almost four weeks, a World Food Programme spokesman said. Aden and the other southern provinces of Yemen have been largely inaccessible to U.N. food aid, and around 13 million people - over half the population - are thought to be in a situation of "critical" or "emergency" food insecurity. "It's the first WFP chartered ship to berth in the port since the conflict erupted in late March," spokesman Peter Smerdon said. Last week WFP negotiated the entry of a convoy of food trucks into Aden province, but said docking a ship was impossible because of fighting raging around the port area.

A 40 truck convoy carrying enough food to feed 117,000 people for a month has reached Yemen's Aden province after being held at a checkpoint for days, Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Programme in Cairo, said on Tuesday. Etefa said 13 trucks entered Aden on Monday and the remaining 27 on Tuesday, with 1,285 tonnes of food in total. But hopes of shipping 500,000 litres of fuel to Aden were still stymied by security problems. "The area around the port for the last 48 hours has been a war zone," she said. (Reporting by Tom Miles)

The presidents of Ghana and Ivory Coast agreed on Monday to negotiate an amicable end to issues around their maritime dispute, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who will chair the negotiations, said on Monday. "We have a deal," Annan told Reuters. A source close to the talks later made clear Annan was referring to the fact that he had been able to get the two presidents - Ivory Coast's Alassane Ouattara and Ghana's John Dramani Mahama - to talk. "This is just a start of the process. They are asking Mr. Annan to help them find an amicable solution," the source said. The two presidents will not be discussing the delimitation of the border, the source said, since that is under the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg.

The presidents of Ivory Coast and Ghana reached a deal on Monday in talks on a maritime border dispute that had frozen new oil drilling in a contested area, mediator Kofi Annan told Reuters. "We have a deal," the former U.N. secretary general told Reuters, as he wrapped up the talks in Geneva. He did not elaborate and officials did not immediately disclose the terms of the agreement. It appeared to have been reached quickly. Ivory Coast's presidency said President Alassane Ouattara had left Abidjan on Sunday for the discussions with his Ghanaian counterpart John Dramani Mahama. An international tribunal ruled last month that Ghana could continue developing a $4.9 billion offshore oil project in the area but imposed a ban on new drilling.

British and German warships made ready to sail for waters off Libya as Europe ramped up rescue operations in the Mediterranean after up to 900 desperate migrants drowned last weekend on a boat heading for Italy. Yet hours after European Union leaders agreed in Brussels on Thursday to treble funding for EU maritime missions and pledged more ships and aircraft, 14 clandestine migrants were killed when a train ploughed into dozens of Somalis and Afghans making their way in darkness along a rail track in a Macedonian gorge. The incident highlighted the variety of routes that growing numbers are taking to escape war and poverty in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and chance their luck in a wealthy region that offers, at best, a chilly welcome.

The European Union must urgently set up a rescue operation for migrants at sea and commit to receiving significantly higher numbers of refugees, top U.N. officials and the International Organization for Migration said on Thursday. "The European Union response needs to go beyond the present minimalist approach... which focuses primarily on stemming the arrival of migrants and refugees on its shores," they said in a joint statement ahead of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels. The statement was co-signed by the U.N. human rights and refugee agency chiefs Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein and António Guterres, U.N. special representative for migration Peter Sutherland and William Lacy Swing, head of the International Organization for Migration. (Reporting by Tom Miles

At least five merchant vessels carrying food are stuck off Yemen as warships from a Saudi-led coalition search them for weapons bound for Iran-allied Houthi rebel forces, with delays adding to a humanitarian crisis. Yemen imports more than 90 percent of its food, including most of its wheat and all its rice, to feed a population of 25 million. Much of its needs had been serviced by foreign ships, although shipping lines have now reduced or stopped port calls. Ship tracking data showed at least five cargo ships were anchored off Yemen unable to enter Yemeni waters. "Disruption of navigation in Yemen's territorial waters will adversely affect food security," U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said.

China lost an appeal at the World Trade Organization in a case brought by the United States, the European Union and Japan to challenge China's restrictions on exports of rare earths, according to a WTO Appellate Body ruling published on Thursday. "... China has not demonstrated that the export quotas that China applies to various forms of rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum by virtue of the series of measures at issue are justified ... " the document's conclusion said. China produces more than 90 percent of the world's rare earths, which are key elements in defence industry components and modern technology from iPhones and disk drives to wind turbines. It imposed strict export quotas in 2010, saying it was trying to curtail pollution and preserve resources.

Almost 100,000 boat people have made the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe this year, a roughly 60 percent increase on the whole of last year, and about 800 have died in the attempt, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday. The exodus has surged this year, as far more migrants put their lives in the hands of smugglers or unseaworthy vessels in a desperate attempt to reach Europe. More than 75,000 made the trip in the first six months of the year, landing up in Italy, Greece, Spain and Malta, the UNHCR agency said. Their number included 10,500 children, two-thirds of them unaccompanied or separated from their families. The number of the whole of 2013 was around 60,000.