Many traders and hedge funds are nursing losses after a whiplash reversal in one of the biggest commodity trading trends of the year – a bet on a widening spread between different types of crude oil.

Europe's fisheries chief called on Wednesday for close monitoring of the trade in bluefin tuna caught in Libyan waters, fearing illegal catches could push the endangered fish closer to extinction amid the chaos of war.

Atlantic bluefin fetch more than $100,000 each in markets such as Japan, but stocks have plunged by more than 80 percent since the 1970s due to overfishing, many scientists say.

Zimbabwe is on the brink of having 100,000 infections of cholera, a preventable disease that has already killed 4,283 people there and remains a serious threat, the Zimbabwean Red Cross and its partners said on Tuesday.

South African farmers have been offered 10 million hectares of farm land to grow maize, soya beans as well as poultry and dairy farming in the Republic of Congo, South Africa's main farmers union said on Wednesday.

Opec president Chakib Khelil warned on Sunday that oil prices will continue to rise because of the falling dollar, in an interview in the Algeria-News. "The price of oil will rise again in the coming weeks. We have to follow the evolution of the dollar, because a 1% fall in the dollar means four dollars more on the price of oil,' Khelil, who is Algeria's minister of energy and mines, told the independent daily.

In a major breakthrough for the state-run Oil India Limited (OIL) in securing oil and gas assets abroad, the company and its partners have entered into an agreement with National Oil Corporation of Libya for four exploration blocks in that country that are estimated to hold two trillion cubic metres (tcm) of gas reserves. According to an official spokesman here, a consortia of OIL, Algeria's Sonatrach and Indian Oil Corporation, signed exploration and production sharing agreement with the National Oil Corporation of Libya.

Libya on Tuesday shipped 30 tonnes of humanitarian relief to drought-stricken Niger, one of several African states struggling to cope with a surge in global food prices, Libyan state media said on Tuesday. Libya also sent a team of doctors and pharmacists to distribute the aid, which includes medicine, clothes and tents, and provide health care to the poor in the Sahelian country, one of the world's top producers of uranium. Oil-exporting Libya is one of the main sources of aid to its neighbour Niger, an arid country on the southern fringe of the Sahara.

Russia's Gazprom took further steps to strengthen its hold on natural gas supplies to Europe on Thursday, signing a joint venture with Libya and saying it was in preliminary talks on a multibillion dollar project to pipe Nigerian gas to Europe across the Sahara. News of the two projects came as Vladimir Putin, Russian president, became the first Russian leader since 1985 to visit Libya. According to the country's official news agency, Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi said during talks with Mr Putin he supported the idea of forming an Opec-style group of gas-exporting countries.

The time has come for the government to get off the oil industry's back

The runaway rise in international oil prices, which recently crossed $100 a barrel, has put Indian oil companies in a spot. Even as their costs rise, they are unable to raise prices to get the resources needed for acquiring oil assets or otherwise build the infrastructure needed for oil security.

Medical Malpractice