... it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, …

Russia has begun oil shipments to China via an East Siberian link, with supplies delivered in January expected to hit 1.3 million tonnes, ….

Igor Dyomin, a spokesman for Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, confirmed on Saturday that the supplies had begun.

Russia, the world's biggest crude oil exporter, has concentrated most of its 50,000km-long pipeline network in West Siberia, but the new Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline gives it access to the world's largest energy consumers' market.

According to the final schedule for crude oil exports and transit, in January-March 2011, Russia will ship 3.68 million tonnes of oil to China via ESPO.

"According to our plan, the input capacity 2,100 cubic metres per hour, that's 43,000 tonnes per day. This is what we have so far," Li Yunchao, an official with the China Petroleum Pipeline Company, told Al Jazeera.

An annual plan envisages the supply of 15 million tonnes (300,000 barrels per day). Many oil market participants expected it would effectively double Russian sales to China, which totalled 12.8 million tonnes (308,000 bpd) in the first 10 months of 2010.

Transneft started to ship the barrels along the first stage of the pipeline, which runs in a 2,757km arc above Lake Baikal. So far the oil had been transported only by rail to

The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected a request from prosecutors in Warsaw for assistance in the investigation into the alleged CIA prisons in Poland, where captives claim they were tortured.

On 18 March, the Prosecutor’s Office of Appeal in Warsaw filed a motion for legal assistance from the US Department of Justice into the probe.

On 7 October, reports the PAP news agency, the US informed prosecutors that the motion had been rejected on the basis of the international Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters and that the U.S. authorities consider the matter “to be closed”.

The revelation that the US will not be cooperating with the investigation into the alleged black site, thought to have been in northern Poland near the Szymany air base, comes after a second man followed al-Qaeda suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in asking prosecutors in Warsaw to look into his case.

"According to the information we have, Abu Zubaydah was one of those people detained and interrogated by the CIA somewhere on the territory of Poland," Polish lawyer Bartlomiej Jankowski told journalists in the

Government officials expressed alarm on Wednesday about what they described as Iran’s unexplained ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan, asserting that at least 1,400 loaded tankers were parked on Iran’s side of three border crossings.

Abdul Karim Barahwe, the governor of Nimroz Province in western Afghanistan, said the Iranian authorities had started halting tankers bound for Afghanistan about 10 days ago. The effect is driving up fuel prices just as winter is setting in.

“We really don’t know the exact cause of the ban; Iran doesn’t officially say the cause of the ban,” he said. Now, he said, both the Interior and Commerce Ministries, as well as President Hamid Karzai’s office, “are trying to sort out this problem with Iran.”

The governor said that tankers full of fuel were backed up at the border crossings of Nimroz, Farah and Islam Qala.

There has been no word in Iran about a ban on Afghanistan-bound fuel. The restriction may reflect Iran’s own energy problems, caused in part by Western sanctions on the country over its nuclear program, as well as a sharp increase in Iranian fuel prices caused by a government phase-out of subsidies that began this month. Or it could represent an effort to retaliate against the United States for the sanctions, even though the fuel is not supposed to be supporting the American war effort.

Afghanistan is landlocked and relies heavily on fuel brought in by truck from Iran, Pakistan and the former Soviet republics.

US oil services group Halliburton agreed to pay Nigeria 35 million dollars to settle a bribery dispute which led to charges being filed against former US vice president Dick Cheney, it said Tuesday.

Nigeria had on December 7 filed an indictment against nine people and entities, including Cheney, who was head of Halliburton before becoming vice president after 2000 elections.

Under the agreement, "all lawsuits and charges against KBR (former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root) and Halliburton corporate entities and associated persons have been withdrawn," the company said in a statement posted on its website.

Halliburton agreed to pay 32.5 million dollars to the Nigerian government, plus 2.5 million dollars in costs, the statement said.

Nigerian anti-graft officials had previously said a settlement of 250 million dollars was being sought which would include some 130 million currently frozen in Switzerland, with the rest paid in fines.

Those charged included Halliburton CEO David Lesar, former KBR head Albert "Jack" Stanley and KBR's current chief William Utt.

The case involves an alleged 182-million-dollar cash-for-contract scandal over 10 years, ending in 2005, concerning the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in southern Nigeria.

The consortium involved in the gas plant, TSKJ, was one of the nine indicted.

Nigeria's anti-corruption police said on Thursday they planned to file charges against former Vice President Dick Cheney in a $180 million bribery case involving a former unit of oil services firm Halliburton.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday summoned the country chief of Halliburton and last week detained 10 Nigerian and expatriate Halliburton staff for questioning after raiding its Lagos office.

"We are filing charges against Cheney," EFCC spokesman Femi Babafemi told Reuters, but declined to give any further details on what the charges were, or where they would be filed.

Houston-based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton unit, pleaded guilty last year to U.S. charges that it paid $180 million in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the Niger Delta.

KBR and Halliburton, which was once headed by Cheney, reached a $579 million settlement in the United States but Nigeria, France and Switzerland have conducted their own investigations into the case.

Italian students stormed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Rome's Colosseum and blocked roads and railways Thursday in protest against university reform planned by Silvio Berlusconi's struggling government.

The measures, currently before parliament, include spending cuts and time limits on research.

Thousands of students marched in cities around Italy and occupied university buildings. One was injured during clashes with police in Florence, news agencies reported, but demonstrations were largely peaceful.

"We will block this reform," students chanted outside parliament buildings, waving smoke flares and banners.

They breached security at the Tower of Pisa, flying banners from the summit, and jumped over entrance turnstiles at the Colosseum.

The protest was the latest in a wave of demonstrations against austerity measures in Europe. In London, thousands of people rallied Wednesday against a rise in university fees.