News Archive - 23 March 2011

A senior official at the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) says the IRCS's first consignment of humanitarian aid to quake-hit Japan is scheduled to arrive in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on Thursday.

Yet again, our leaders think they’ve got a calling to save a country in the Middle East.

Tributes paid to the 'diplomat's diplomat', who quietly and doggedly negotiated the release of American hostages in Tehran Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, has died at the age of 85 after a career of quiet heroism in which he helped bring peace to the Balkans and resolve...

Persian carpets have been well received at the 2011 edition of Domotex Asia/Chinafloor exhibition held in the Chinese city of Shanghai.

LAKE FOREST – Police received a call at 2:51 a.m. on Sunday from the 24500 block of Raymond Way from a caller who said his girlfriend hit him in the eye and he was bleeding. The woman later said her boyfriend argued with her and she was upset...

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  (PNA) -- Relatives of a religious missionary from a remote town in North Cotabato who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Iran for illegal drug possession are asking the government to extend a helping hand. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported that an Iranian...

Oil transport is specifically susceptible to piracy because about one-half of total production is moved by tankers on fixed maritime routes. The piracy surcharge tacks on $800,000 to a 2 million barrel supertanker's total shipping cost.

WASHINGTON - As America's NATO allies shoulder a greater share of the air war in Libya, the Arab countries that urged the U.N. Security Council to impose a no-fly zone are missing from the action.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday arrived in Moscow for talks with the Russian leadership after a deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem threatened an escalation of Middle East violence.

The bombing of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, five years ago brought the most vicious sectarian warfare that Iraq has seen. Now the project to rebuild the shrine, which is expected to generate millions of dollars, has led new tensions to surface.

(RTTNews) - At least ten people were killed in the Syrian city of Deraa on Wednesday when security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters mourning the deaths of fellow activists in a police crackdown on a mosque in the city a day earlier, according to reports citing witnesses.

A few irritable speculations, from D.C. to City Hall

Bayer CropScience said Wednesday that it has reached agreement to purchase Hornbeck Seed Co. Inc. of DeWitt, Ark. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Since the United States reopened trade with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi government in 2004, businesses have witnessed a Libyan culture rife with kickbacks, strong-arm tactics and political patronage.

Contradictions that leave you scratching your head are not regulated to a political party or a certain group.

Henry Posner Jr., a low-profile yet influential Pittsburgh businessman who ran dozens of companies, contributed handsomely to local political campaigns and donated millions of dollars to Jewish causes among others that were close to his heart, died Wednesday. He was 92 and had been hospitalized at UPMC Shadyside for...

Which parts of the world are most likely to witness conflict during the coming year?

Average gas prices are steady this first week of spring, although energy and industry officials anticipate seasonal increases as the summer driving season approaches.

The fundamental stimulus of the attack on Libya is greed, not the protection of the Libyan people. In fact, the people of Libya have suffered more during this bombardment by Western powers and their allies than during the entire 41 years of the leadership of Muammar al-Gaddafi.

Democratic awakening in Arab states is not guaranteed

MIAMI : U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday announced that a federal grand jury in Miami has indicted four family members on various counts of illegally attempting to export 22 F-5 fighter jet engines to Iran, a violation of executive orders banning exports to Iran.

London - World oil prices advanced on Wednesday on escalating unrest in Libya and the Middle East, and as traders digested the latest inventory data from the United States, the world's biggest oil consumer.

Iran's Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini says cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds between Iran and Tajikistan call for stronger ties.

A screen grab from Dermundo.com shows the pop-up editing tool. Photo: Courtesy Brian McConnell It is called the World Wide Web, but due to language barriers, that is somewhat of a misnomer.

College is a time for change and the mill of experiences, realizations and revelations. While it probably doesn’t bother most people when they change their majors, course schedules or political affiliations, what about when someone changes his or her faith?

Does no one else have a problem with our military intervention in Libya? I thought we had an anti-war president in Barack Hussein Obama — one who would take every possible precaution to avoid military conflict. But I guess the man is full of surprises. Or hypocrisy, whichever way you’d...

A religious singer from this town was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Iranian court late last year for allegedly trying to sneak out illegal drugs, his sister told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Wednesday.

Last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for political reform once again, while at the same time he rejected (again) any comparisons between his country and the autocracies now collapsing in North Africa and the Middle East. Premier Wen is right when he says that the current socio-economic conditions in...

Tehran, March 21 (CNA) -- Iran is steadily directing efforts to bolstering its air force. A high-ranking officer of the Iranian military on March 19 said that a squadron of home-made fighter "Saeqeh" (thunderbolt) was put into commission in the air force.

BY THE time Muammar Gaddaffi came to power in 1969, I was a third-year university student at Dar-es-Salaam. We welcomed him because he was in the tradition of Col. Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt who had a nationalist and pan-Arabist position.

The restoration of electricity at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station, stirred hopes that the crisis was ebbing, but nuclear engineers say some of the most difficult and dangerous tasks are still ahead.

Pyongyang, March 23 (KCNA) -- Iran has bolstered up defense capabilities and strengthened bilateral relations with neighboring nations, steadfastly defending its rights to nuclear activities for a peaceful purpose.

Worried that they have not been able to contain the threat of nuclear radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency recently re-classified the situation to a level 5 nuclear event.

by Staff Writers Moscow (RIA Novosti) Mar 23, 2011 The Russian Defense Ministry will buy 36 strategic ballistic missiles, two strategic missile submarines and 20 strategic cruise missiles this year, Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Friday.

What's fueling the political uprisings that are happening across the Arab world? How is the unrest in Libya different from the events that recently took place in Egypt? We speak to a pair of local experts about what these changes could mean for Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Tens of millions of pounds are being wasted because the Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to recruit "child soldiers" who are more likely to drop out of the armed forces, according to a report.

GAZA militants bombarded southern Israel with rockets and mortars yesterday, drawing retaliatory Israeli air strikes in an escalation of the worst hostilities in the area since Israel went to war in the Palestinian territory two years ago.

SOME people still have problems calling the new place anything other than Lansdowne Road but even for those who can get their heads around the official change of name, the fanciful title of ‘Fortress Aviva’ still belongs to the realms of wishful thinking.

The first cultural week of the Islamic Republic of Iran has kicked off in Tajikistan in an effort to introduce Persian art and culture.

Sophisticated attack thought to be state-sponsored.

MOSCOW - RUSSIA on Wednesday called a Jerusalem bus bombing that killed one person and injured 30 a 'barbaric act of terror' that must not be allowed to destabilise the Middle East peace process. 'Moscow most resolutely condemns this barbaric act of terror, the organisers and the executors of this...

BAHRAIN has warned its nationals not to travel to Lebanon for their own safety after Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah came out in support of weeks of protests by mainly Shi’ite demonstrators.

South Africa today leaves me feeling like Rip Van Winkle. It’s as if I went to sleep in the mid-20th Century when this nation suffered under a violent, racist white minority government and its Apartheid policy of color-defined racial segregation. Each morning now, I wake up in the 21st Century...

At a time when every official is packaging lousy policies as appealing "narratives," it might be appropriate to recall an old master of this game, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who knew how to use a good line to turn a strategic loss into a diplomatic...

By Charles Jay Believe it or not, the first heavyweight championship fight in Atlantic City did not take place until September of 1983, when Larry Holmes, who held the WBC version of the title and had just come off a tougher-than-expected defense against Tim Witherspoon.

The opposition as well as doctors, nurses and other medical staffers, say hospitals and hospital worker are being harassed -- or worse -- by the regime

BEIRUT: Bahrain's two carriers cancelled flights to and from Lebanon Wednesday, in follow up to a Bahraini Foreign Ministry warning against travel to Beirut amid safety concerns for its citizens. Gulf Air and Bahrain Air cancelled all flights in and out of Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport for several days...

The 2012 London Olympics men’s football tournament Asian qualifiers will enter the second phase with a draw to be held at the AFC House on March 30. Eleven teams, who have qualified from Round 1, will join the 13 direct entrants into the second round.

Why Jersualem bomb will ripple across the region

The United States is now fighting three wars simultaneously. But why stop at three when we have the world's largest and most expensive military?

Featured Artist: Margaret Livermore , through March, Penn Cove Gallery, 9 Front St., Coupeville. Watercolor artist. 360-678-1176. Featured Artist: Kent Sanders , through March, Artworks Gallery, 765 Wonn Rd., Greenbank. Jewelry designs based on fluidity & kinetics.

AFC has announced the qualification format for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Asian qualifiers on Wednesday. Forty-three teams have entered the fray to grab four automatic and an inter-continental playoff berths.

WASHINGTON: Israel will not look to escalate conflict with the Palestinians following a deadly bus bomb attack in Jerusalem, Israel's US ambassador said Wednesday, arguing that there is "no cycle of violence."

TEHRAN, March 23 (UPI) -- The extension of unilateral sanctions by the United States on Iran is a ploy to preserve U.S. authority, Iran's foreign minister says.

OTTAWA - Opposition MPs have once again called for Canada's top spy to resign or be fired, this time using the power of a Commons committee report to do so.

In a fresh blow to the fundamental integrity of the internet, a hacker last week obtained legitimate web certificates that would have allowed him to impersonate some of the top sites on the internet, including the login pages used by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo e-mail customers. The hacker, whose March...

Bahraini airlines have suspended flights to Iran because the Islamic Republic has criticized the brutal crackdown on the antigovernment protests in the Persian Gulf sheikhdom.

Avian flu outbreaks reported in Indonesia, Japan, Bangladesh Indonesian officials have reported recent avian flu outbreaks affecting three districts on the resort island of Bali as well as in Bengkulu province on the island of Sumatra, according to news reports.

Several security certificates used to authenticate and encrypt Web sessions have been found to be fraudulent, and could be deployed to trick users out of personal information on high-profile websites including Google, Yahoo and Skype.

Iran may have been involved in an attack that resulted in hackers' acquiring bogus digital certificates for some of the Web's biggest sites, including Google and Gmail, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo, a certificate issuing firm said today.

They are called the Amazon Warriors, the Lady Hawks, the Valkyries.There is something positively mythological about a group of strong women swooping down to shake the president out of his delicate sensibilities and show him the way to war.

By Ramesh Mathew Moscow has made it clear that it does not approve the ongoing actions of the Nato allies in Libya, Russian Ambassador to Qatar, Dr Vladimir Titorenko, said yesterday.

By Santhosh V Perumal Business Reporter Fiscal vulnerabilities in the event of weakening oil price may increase gradually due to structural expenditure commitments by many GCC governments to pre-empt social and political tensions, according to Moody’s.

The West Bank's Fatah leadership condemned Wednesday's attack. Two militant groups in Gaza - Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees - welcomed the violence but no one has yet claimed responsibility, according to the NYT.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and NGO campaign groups Wednesday said diplomatic shifts on highly- charged issues like religion and Iran in the long-polarized U.N. Human Rights Council could turn it into a more effective body.

The writer Leon Wieseltier opened his keynote address at the Daniel Pearl Memorial lecture at UCLA last month with a telling joke. “For 50 years, nothing ever changed in the Middle East,” he said, “until the minute I sat down to write this speech.”

While five Israeli Jews were being murdered in Itamar last week, something else was being murdered on college campuses across America: Israel’s name. This murder rampage is called Israel Apartheid Week.

There's something distinctly old-school about the exhibit "Rendered: A Stark Unreal" at the Contemporary Art Galleries , 830 Bolton Road in Storrs, at the University of Connecticut. Its invited artists use an epic scale and academy-quality drawing skills that one might have found in old engravings or bygone political cartoons.

Federal prosecutors say four family members with ties to Colombia have been charged in Miami with illegally attempting to export 22 engines for jet fighters to Iran.

Iran is under investigation for new attempts to import items from North Korea and China that are banned under UN sanctions against Tehran’s nuclear and missile programme, UN diplomats said on Tuesday.

Gunkerty Jeb writes "A major issuer of secure socket layer (SSL) certificates acknowledged on Wednesday that it had issued 9 fraudulent SSL certificates to seven Web domains, including those for Google.com, Yahoo.com and Skype.com following a security compromise at an affiliate firm. The attack originated from an...

Gold plus Gaddafi – what more sexing up could a story need? Well, quite a bit it would seem... This isn't a moral point, just a fact. So sometimes, as we told the BBC World Service on Tuesday, it plays to the good of dictators; sometimes it plays to private...

Growing tensions between the oil-rich Sunni-ruled Arab countries and Shi'ite Iran, which is Persian and not Arab, continue to affect relationships throughout the Middle East, Reuters reports.

Multiple injuries reported after a bomb exploded at a bus station in Jerusalem whilst Palestinian militia group launch rockets against other Israeli targets.

U.S. diplomats say they are confident of getting the necessary support to create a special United Nations investigator for the human rights situation in Iran.

Follow Israel news on and . Growing tensions between the oil-rich Sunni-ruled Arab countries and Shi'ite Iran, which is Persian and not Arab, continue to affect relationships throughout the Middle East, Reuters reports.

In a life that included nearly 50 movies, eight marriages and numerous charitable causes, it's easy to forget the fact that Elizabeth Taylor essayed a brief career on the stage. In a life that included nearly 50 movies, eight marriages and numerous charitable causes, it's easy to forget the fact...

Kim Clijsters told reporters that s he won't attend Asian WTA events this fall because of worries about radiation. Speaking to Flemish journalists during a media session in Key Biscayne, the four-time Grand Slam champion said she'll skip tournaments in Beijing and Tokyo out of concern for fallout from the...

Having encouraged a revolution in Libya, Al-Jazeera is now critical of President Obama’s U.N.-backed effort to protect the people being slaughtered by dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The United States looks to Tehran to show the international community it's committed to addressing concerns about its nuclear program, a diplomat said.

>MANAMA (Reuters) - For all the calls for dialogue in Bahrain, weeks of unrest culminating in a crackdown on mainly Shi'ite protesters have left the country so divided that few expect to reach a political resolution any time soon. Opposition leaders and the Crown Prince's team have only met once...

> Deutsche Boerse's Clearstream unit has been sued for that amount because of money clients had deposited with Clearstream. That money became subject of a dispute after a class action suit at a U.S. court against Iran. According to a Deutsche Boerse supervisory board member, the U.S. court...

What was once the coolest place on the internet that promoted giant death rays has gone to the great digital beyond

Get your brackets ready. Foreign Policy offers their own version of March Madness — the Democrats versus the dictators. Who will win?

TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Israel has identified a radar sent by Iran to the Hamas military. Copyrights 2008, Middle East Newsline. All rights reserved.

A flurry of software vulnerabilities found in a variety of industrial control systems has prompted vendors to begin developing patches, following a warning by the U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT).

An international team of former diplomats called Wednesday on the Obama administration and its Afghan partners to push now for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, as US-led forces near a peak.

Iran’s Fars News Agency revealed that the country has built an unmanned flying saucer, named “Zohal” (Saturn in Persian) which will be used for various missions including aerial imaging. Included in the article is the above image, which (as the Daily Mail points out) looks like it is from a...

NICOSIA [MENL] -- The Iranian Air Force has formed a squadron of its new indigenous fighter-jet. Copyrights 2008, Middle East Newsline. All rights reserved.

President Barack Obama faced fierce criticism and even long-shot calls for his impeachment Wednesday over a US role in Libya that had no formal price tag and only a murky "exit strategy."

When President Ian Khama ascended to the highest office in the land at the beginning of April 2008, speculation was rife and is still today that Botswana, Africa's shining example of democracy and the rule of law, was heading for a military dictatorship, write Mmegi Correspondents GASEBALWE SERETSE and BOTSALO...

Many countries in the Middle East have built their entire existence around oil. They will eventually realize how little of the oil has been invested in preparations for a post-oil future.

There is no shortage of challenges facing the world today and many investors are frozen waiting for clarity in these times of uncertainty. The problem is, in all likelihood, the world will not settle down any time soon and we will surely continue to see geopolitical shifts and unrest plaguing...

Break out the foil hats: Iran has built a UFO. This photo accompanies an actual news release from Iranian news service Fars, which claims the Islamic Republic has built a flying saucer.

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - 03/23/11) - Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) condemns this morning's bomb blast at a bus station in Jerusalem, the most serious in a series of recent attacks on Israel by Gazan terrorists. As ambulances rushed to help the wounded at the central bus...

Obama skips tourist stop in El Salvador as opposition to Libya strikes grows at home Shaky start for makeshift alliance Yemen civil war could test emerging Obama doctrine Birthday spanking for Obamacare UAW Targets Ford

The international coalition has wiped out Muammar Gaddafi's air force and no RAF planes have come under Libyan attack during the operation, a senior commander said today.

MUSCAT, Oman - Protesters in Oman have set up a tent camp at a government complex in the capital Muscat, saying they will not leave until several ministers they accuse of corruption leave.

BAGHDAD - Iraq said Wednesday it plans to build 50 power plants by the summer of 2012 to alleviate shortages, one of the reasons behind violent protests that have rocked the country for more than a month.

Liberal writers are trying to steal the body of Ronald Reagan. But they don't want to hold it for ransom. Instead, they are vigorously telling us he wasn't what we think he was.