News from the Molotov Cocktails of Egypt, Turkey, Syria and other hellholes

From Platts Financial:
....The key northern oil pipeline  from Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is expected to resume flows within 72 hours following yet another explosion on the line on Sunday, sources said Monday.
A bomb placed under the Kirkuk-Ceyhan line in Iraq's Ninewa province exploded early Sunday halting flows, a senior Iraqi oil official told Platts.
"The exports were completely stopped from Kirkuk," said the senior official with the state-run North Oil Company, who asked not be identified.
The official said the explosion took place in Ain al-Jahsh, south of the city of Mosul, in the middle of an area increasingly rife with al-Qaeda and other militants..........

From Turkish Govt mouthpiece TodaysZaman:
. ...Chief Executive Officer of Twitter Dick Costolo has denied the rumors that Twitter is suspending the accounts of people who tweet against the Turkish government.
Answering questions of Turkish users, the CEO of the world's largest microblogging site denied the rumors, saying: “That is simply not true. There are issues with opposing groups there reporting each other's accounts for abuse. We are on it.” Costolo did not elaborate on how Twitter is handling the abuse reports.

Twitter has 500 million registered users and only around 180 million of them are active users. Thus, last week the company started to suspend accounts that have not been not active for a certain period of time. This policy caused a dramatic decrease in number of followers of many Twitter users, which sparked a rumor in Turkey that the Turkish government may have a hand in this action to silence the voice of Gezi protesters on Twitter..........

From NYTimes
Fears of a new round of violent confrontations in Egypt loomed on Monday as the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies organized protest marches on Interior Ministry buildings nationwide in defiance of warnings by the military-led government, even as the European Union’s top foreign policy official was visiting Cairo and talking to both sides in an attempt to mediate an easing of the crisis.
The European official, Catherine Ashton, who arrived in Egypt late Sunday, was meeting with the interim president, Adli Mansour; his vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei; and the chief of the armed forces, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. She also was scheduled to meet with some of the remaining Muslim Brotherhood leaders who have not yet been arrested......

From NPR:
......Photographer Marcin Suder was staying at a media center in the rebel-held town of Saraqeb in Idlib province when a group of masked men reportedly stormed in Wednesday morning. They beat a Syrian media activist, stole equipment and abducted Suder.

It's unclear who might be responsible for the kidnapping. According to The Associated Press, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday that it's likely Suder was taken by radicals seeking ransom and that the abduction "probably has the character of a robbery.".........

From Reuters Picture Gallery:
21 pictures of war-torn Syria  

From TimeMag:
....Initially carved out of the desert   as a short-term refuge for up to 60,000 refugees, Zaatari has become Jordan’s fourth largest city and the world’s second largest refugee camp behind Dadaab in eastern Kenya. Of the estimated 650,000 Syrians who have crossed into Jordan, 350,000 have filtered through Zaatari and 150,000 call it home. The influx, sometimes 3,000 refugees per day, is unprecedented.....

From DailyStar:
Lebanese police have arrested “one of the most dangerous men” wanted for drug trafficking, the Internal Security Forces said in a statement over the weekend. Police said they arrested the wanted Palestinian man Friday after the anti-drug department received information on his whereabouts.
The man was identified by his initials, A.D. and is also known by his nickname Al-Sanfour, The Smurf......

From AlAkhbar:
A Saudi court sentenced on Monday  a rights activist to seven years in jail and 600 lashes for setting up a "liberal" network and alleged insults to Islam, activists said.
"Raef Badawi has been sentenced to seven years in jail and 600 lashes," lawyer Waleed Abualkhair wrote on his Twitter account, adding that the judge ordered the closure of the website of the Saudi Liberal Network.
He said Badawi, a co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network, was charged with criticizing the religious police, as well as calling for "religious liberalization."
A judge had referred Badawi in December to a higher court for alleged apostasy, a charge that could lead to the death penalty in the medieval, US-backed kingdom.....