News Archive - 29 March 2011

Both playful and serious, light and dark, pensive and provocative, Alireza Darvish's paintings draw us into the world of books and readers within the subconscious in the surreal world.

> The United States suspects Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of its civil atomic program. Iran denies this, saying its nuclear program is solely to produce energy so that it can export more of its valuable oil and gas. Major powers have tightened sanctions on Iran...

>But the move was unlikely to satisfy protester demands since the cabinet has little authority in Syria, where power is concentrated in the hands of Assad, his family and the security apparatus.Tens of thousands of Syrians held pro-government rallies on Tuesday, awaiting a speech in which Assad was expected...

> * AirAsia X needs capital for expansion * AirAsia forms online travel JV with Expedia (Adds details) SINGAPORE, March 29 (Reuters) - AirAsia X, the long-haul affiliate of Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia , hopes to list shares by next year so that it will be easier to raise funds...

Bangkok If Mehdi Kamyabi Pour, press officer at Iran's embassy in Bangkok, is to be believed, accusations that his country is developing nuclear weapons are "absolutely unfounded".

Veteran Iranian cinema, television and stage actor Mohammad-Ali Varshochi has passed away at the age of 86 in the capital city of Tehran.

By: Debbie Truong Despite her fears, Salma El Daly was prepared to join forces alongside revolutionaries when an uprising erupted in her native Egypt in late January. ...

NEWTON — Sussex County Community College celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps Friday.

It takes one to know one -- even when it comes to breaking another city's parking laws. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who's made himself a top New York parking scold by loudly complaining about UN diplomats who fail to pay parking tickets, racked up a whopping $2,180 in...

Tel Aviv A month after Vogue magazine called Syria's first lady Asma Assad "a rose in the desert" in a puff piece that portrayed the Assads as obsessively concerned with both family democracy and the "active citizenship" of Syrian youth, [1] the Syrian regime was busy shooting active citizens.

How did such a powerful and beautiful dimension of Islam come to be viewed with such suspicion by so many Muslims?

An Eau Claire man will spend two years on probation for firing four shots toward a man and threatening his former roommate with a gun.

Israel's consul general to New England said Tuesday he hopes the uprisings in the Middle East lead to democratic governments, but he is skeptical that will happen, at least in the short term.

Frank Sesno spoke at Elon University as part of a conference about media and politics. Photo by Caitlin O'Donnell.

An ancient vegetable is finding legions of new fans as cooks rediscover the joy of peas. Joy? Peas? Don't be hasty and dismiss the pairing. Yes, most of us grew up with frozen, canned or dried split peas. Shelling peas by hand, it seemed, was just too much work.

SINGAPORE: AirAsia X, the long-haul affiliate of Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia Bhd (AirAsia), hopes to list shares by next year so that it will be easier to raise funds for expansion, AirAsia chief executive officer Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes said yesterday.

ONE Middle Eastern intervention makes the headlines every day. The other barely rates a mention. The first is ostensibly aimed at protecting civilians and at facilitating change, the second at safeguarding the status quo.

Australia wins in Dortmund eight months after losing by four goals to Germany in the World Cup. Spain and the Netherlands remain perfect in qualifying for the European Championship. Australia wins in Dortmund eight months after losing by four goals to Germany in the World Cup.

During a time when more and more conflicts overseas are making headlines, one Montana Native is working to build understanding about world affairs. Ambassador Mark Johnson's ongoing efforts to connect Montana to all cultures makes him our latest Hometown Hero. Revolutions arising around the world are nothing new to Ambassador...

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said Tuesday that the presence of Saudi Arabian forces in Bahrain will have dire consequences for regional stability and security, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed Yoram Cohen to succeed Yuval Diskin as head of the Israel Security Agency (ISA), also known as the Shin Bet, when Diskin ends his six year term in May.

“Get a kit, make a plan and stay informed!” This is what the government has been urging all of us to do, and it appears that Americans are starting to listen. There is no denying the impact of recent events in Japan on global disaster planning and preparedness. With...

Iran and Paraguay called Tuesday for expansion of relations and cooperation between the two countries, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Since 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet collapse, there will inevitably be a spate of articles viewing those two decades from every possible vantage. In fact, they’ve already started. March 17 was the 20th anniversary of the only free referendum ever held in the Soviet Union.

On Monday night, President Barack Obama right-sized the mission in Libya. His speech explained the limits of our role and our interests in Libya, though the extent of our commitment to the new NATO command is still evolving.

The first monkey that acts like a cow has been discovered — one that regurgitates to give its food another chew, just as cattle do.

Battle: Los Angeles (2011, U.S.) Jonathan Liebesman's sci-fi action film starring Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodri and Cory Hardrict. Crystal Palace, Khudozhestvenny, Mirage Cinema, Pik.

Afghan teenager animates his tragic life story to global acclaim

Iranian referee Mohsen Torki has been selected to judge the 70th Tehran derby between archrivals Esteqlal and Persepolis in the 28th week of Iran Premier League (IPL).

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a Belarusian energy company for its involvement in Iran's petroleum sector, saying the move aims to add pressure on Iran for its failure to meet its international obligations with regard to its nuclear program.

She was a New Yorker, of course, of the only-in kind, a feisty, confident woman who had no problem telling a vice president of the United States where to stick it. Geraldine Ferraro was a formidable woman and a historic political figure who won a victory a generation ago for...

AN acid test awaits the national Olympic team in their quest to qualify for the London Games in the second round of the Asian Zone Qualifiers.

Listen to the Audio JUDY WOODRUFF: For more on Libya and the president's speech , we get the views of two senators. Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed is on the Armed Services Committee. And Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson is on the Foreign Relations Committee. I spoke to them a short...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Paraguayan counterpart Fernando Lugo Mendez have called for more cooperation between the two sides.

Cynicism is not a healthy sentiment, and as the late Molly Ivins pointed out, it absolutely wrecks good journalism. But watching events in the Middle East unfold these days makes it a pretty difficult point of view to avoid.

IF the last half-century was one of hijacking, the new century could see an era of sea-jacking. And when piracy on the high seas combines with terrorism, the mix is dangerous.

The documentary 'Iranium' is sparking debate on Muslim Shariah Law in South Dakota.

The FBI and Italian police are investigating how a hacker managed to convince a New Jersey security firm into issuing it digital certificates for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other major Web sites.

by Staff Writers Beersheva, Israel (AFP) March 27, 2011 Israel on Sunday stationed the first batteries of its "Iron Dome" short-range missile defence system in the south of the country, but stressed the initial deployment was experimental.

Sharlene Schmidt with the four Oil Paintings she completed during the residency. NZ Art Guild member, Sharlene Schmidt, has recently returned to New Zealand from a two week artist’s residency in Hyderabad, India where she took part in a cultural exchange with 11 other artists.

— Marina Nemat doesn’t trust the explosive social unrest that has recently swept across the Middle East. She knows from traumatic and brutal personal experience that promises of democracy and freedom are not always kept.

Newly appointed Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi has said that his country is ready to promote ties between Tehran and Cairo.

Reuters sports schedule at 0001 GMT on Wednesday (times GMT):

New census figures show that the number of mixed-race Americans has grown by nearly 50 percent in the last ten years. And that rise in number is most pronounced in the South. Census data also reveals that 17 percent of kids in the U.S live in blended families. In...

Although the gold standard was abolished in 1971, it may remain a useful tool to measure the relative cost of gold. For gold to fully back the US dollar today, it would have to increase to $7,500 per ounce, up 428% from today s prices.

President Barack Obama declared victory Monday night for his limited military intervention in Libya. After just a week, he said, America has achieved its goal of preventing a slaughter of the rebels. So does that mean Obama is ready to provide similar U.S. military help to besieged protesters down...

Today's round of international friendlies saw victories for Uruguay, Portugal and Denmark, while Russia needed a Roman Pavlyuchenko equaliser to earn a 1-1 draw against Qatar.

For all the tens of billions of dollars a year spent on Internet security a year, on everything from antivirus software to intrusion prevention, there's one component that's vital but remains obscure: which Web sites browsers decide to trust. Each of the major browser makers has compiled a different list...

Some day soon, when pro-democracy campaigners have their cellphones confiscated by police, they'll be able to hit the "panic button" - a special app that will both wipe out the phone's address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists.

Iran's Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi says the ministry plans to invest about $90 billion in South Pars gas and oil projects in the current Iranian calendar year (started March 21).

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration slapped sanctions Tuesday on a state-owned energy company in Belarus over a $500 million investment with an Iranian firm accused of contributing to Iran's suspect nuclear program.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (BP)--Babak Bighash was an electrical engineer for a major government agency in Iran, commuting more than 800 miles every two weeks between his home and workplace. He was a fairly devout Muslim yet he had unanswered questions about Islam.

Longtime Portland Parks & Recreation Director Zari Santner announced her retirement Tuesday. Parks Commissioner Nick Fish will conduct a national search for her replacement. “Portland Parks & Recreation and the people of Portland have benefited enormously from Zari Santner’s ...

The despots who have ruled the Arab world for half a century are not giving up without a fight.In Syria and Yemen, state-sponsored violence has proved counter-effective. Protesters were enraged rather than intimidated.A remarkable...

Ann Arbor area teacher Joyce Gerber teachers her pupils about community heroes and encourages them to reach out to others through an unusual classroom project.

One analyst estimates that if oil production in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen completely stalls, then oil

Rob Lowe shows off his 47-year-old physique on the cover of Vanity Fair. Annie Leibowitz/Vanity Fair Rob Lowe vs. Charlie Sheen . Who's the bigger partier? The answer may seem clear these days, but back in the '80s? Not so much.

With the turmoil rocking the Middle East now threatening the regime in Syria, Israel faces potentially grave dangers and huge opportunities. The dangers are clear: The emergence of a more radical regime in Syria could mean a stronger Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis.

>The decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a lower court ruling allowing the U.S. plaintiffs to search for any and all Iranian assets in the United States to pay a $71.5 million judgment against Iran.The case grew out of a September 1997 triple suicide...

TIKRIT, Iraq, March 29 (UPI) -- At least 21 people were killed Tuesday when 11 gunmen dressed in police uniforms stormed a provincial council office in Tikrit in northern Iraq, officials said.

CUBA-CARTER: Carter to meet with Raul Castro on US-Cuba ties HAVANA (AP) — Jimmy Carter is scheduled to meet with Cuban President Raul Castro during a three-day visit to seek ways to improve relations embittered by a half-century of opposition.

If there were an award for stating the obvious when it comes to the Middle East it would go to The New York Times. On its front page last Friday, the newspaper ran a story headlined, “Muslim Group is Rising Force in New Egypt.” read more

Kutztown Area Middle School students Abigail Makovsky, Kayla Graff, Colton Cutlip and Christina O’Donnell won second place for “Domestic Terrorists or Political Activists? The Paxton Riots and Pamphlet War Embody the Struggle of Colonial America” at the Region 9 National History Day competition recently.

The most important decision a nation can make is to go to war. But our politicians refuse to talk about it.

Hosni Mubarak, the ousted president of Egypt who ruled for 30 years, is said to have accumulated $70 billion from corruption (1) and Egypt has been under Emergency Law as long. Under the law, the police power extended, constitutional rights suspended, and censorship legalized.

Consternation is mounting in Argentina and Israel after the leaking of a document purportedly showing that Argentina’s foreign minister secretly offered Iran a deal to quash the investigation into the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in exchange for better trade relations with Iran.

Both Turkey and Iran play vital roles in bringing peace to their immediate neighborhoods -- and ideally, they'd also have a relationship with the West. Yet the crisis in Syria has put each of them in a difficult position. The regime of Bashar al-Assad may survive this threat, and...

DOHA - RUSSIA were held to a 1-1 draw by Qatar on Tuesday in a game dubbed 'The World Cup Celebration Match' between the countries chosen to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022 respectively. Qatar, which surprisingly won the right to host the event despite it being held...

The number of asylum-seekers from countries including Sri Lanka seeking to live in the industrialized world continues to fall, a latest report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

Transcript of the speech President Obama delivered to the nation regarding Libya on Monday, March 28, 2011

BUFFALO, N.Y., March 29 (UPI) -- A two-masted sailing ship that sank to the bottom of Lake Erie more than 150 years ago belongs to New York's state government, a federal judge ruled.

Latin America is still divided over the military intervention in Libya. But the nations that were initially opposed to it are gradually hardening their stance as the objective of the Western powers taking part in the air strikes authorised by the U.N. Security Council to protect civilians becomes less...

(AP:DAMASCUS, Syria) Facing an extraordinary wave of popular dissent, Syrian President Bashar Assad fired his Cabinet on Tuesday and promised to end widely despised emergency laws _ concessions unlikely to appease protesters demanding sweeping reforms in one of the most hard-line nations in the Middle East.

DAMASCUS, March 30 — President Bashar al-Assad sought to deflect the greatest challenge to his 11-year rule by mobilising tens of thousands of Syrians in mass rallies across the country yesterday in response to pro-democracy protests. Assad also accepted the resignation of his government, ahead of a long-awaited speech in...

The number of Nigerians seeking asylum in industrialised countries dropped from 13,337 in 2009 to 9,453 in 2010, representing an annual decrease of 29 per cent.

While the Middle-East is rocked with unprecedented unrest, Los Angeles seems to have welcomed goodwill ambassadors from Iran -- well, that is, in the form of an alternative-classical Persian-jazz band by the name of Dang Show. "The peace and liberty that we all want around the world doesn't take...

LONDON, March 29 (UPI) -- More U.S. states are called on to abolish the death penalty, the British government said after a review of the practice by Amnesty International.

Iran will allocate the $90 billion-investment in the upstream and downstream sector of the South Pars gas field, IRNA reported Iran's Petroleum Minister Seyed Masoud Mirkazemi as saying.

A buildup of external pressure, combined with growing internal economic stress, makes Tajikistan a Central Asian state worth keeping an eye on.

SAN YSIDRO, Calif., March 29 (UPI) -- U.S. customs officials said they impounded a Mexican tour bus at a California border crossing after finding a load of marijuana hidden in the fuel tank.

Follow Israel news on and . U.S. president Barack Obama was able to please conflicting audiences with his Monday night speech at the National Defense University explaining U.S. policy in Libya.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Facing an extraordinary wave of popular dissent, Syrian President Bashar Assad fired his Cabinet on Tuesday and promised to end widely despised emergency laws — concessions unlikely to appease protesters demanding sweeping reforms in one of the most hard-line nations in the Middle East.

Local, national and global economies are recovering with job gains and consumers returning. Problems still exist, but are working themselves out.

The city's parks director, Zari Santner, has led the agency since 2003.

(AP:WASHINGTON) The Obama administration on Tuesday slapped sanctions on a state-owned energy company in Belarus over a $500 million investment with an Iranian firm accused of contributing to Iran's suspect nuclear program.

Kate Masur on Our Nation's Unrepresented Capital  Masur, an assistant history professor at Northwestern, details Washington D.C,'s history as "an undemocratic anomaly," arguing in The New York Times that "its second-class citizenship is a legacy of racial injustice and, more recently, partisanship in Congress." Masur explains that the...

Several people have asked, "Rob, why do you write such weird blog entries? You ruminate the smallest, most insignificant topics and spit solid gold into the Ziploc® bags you call 'blog entries.' Your odd pop culture references and Major League color commentary on culture and social conventions are unrivaled.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain's interior minister said on Tuesday security forces had not targeted any sect after recent unrest, rejecting opposition complaints the Sunni-led state has subjected majority Shi'ites to abuse.

Nick Clegg will urge the world to make the most of a "new axis of openness" and defend military action in Libya in a keynote foreign policy speech.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Intelligence on the rebel forces battling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has shown "flickers" of al Qaeda or Hezbollah presence, but there is still no detailed picture of the emerging Libyan opposition, NATO's top operations commander said on Tuesday.

It is not easy to settle the Karabakh conflict, it is the most complicate one on the post-soviet territory, Andrey Kelin said.

>LONDON (Reuters) - China and other emerging nations such as Brazil and India are becoming leaders in science to rival traditional "scientific superpowers" like the United States, Europe and Japan, a top British academy said on Monday. A report by the Royal Society science academy also found some rapidly emerging...

NEW YORK: Oil prices rose Tuesday as concerns about political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East trumped U.S. economic data suggesting that American consumers are worried about the cost of fuel and food.

>PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stolen the international limelight with his bravura intervention in Libya but he may find it trickier to deal with the gathering crisis in Syria. It was Sarkozy after all who ended Syria's international isolation when he feted President Bashar al-Assad in a...

Tens of thousands of Syrians held pro-government rallies on Tuesday as President Bashar al-Assad was expected to address the nation after two weeks of pro-democracy protests.

Taxes, water and sewer rates, police staffing and illegal aliens are the four topics of most concern to Marco Island residents, according to the results of a long-range planning survey conducted by city leaders in November. However, there is a slight discrepancy among the level of concern and actual research...

More than one billion urban residents will face serious water shortages by 2050 as climate change worsens effects of urbanization, with Indian cities among the worst hit, a study said Monday. The shortage threatens sanitation in some of the world's fastest-growing cities but also poses risks for wildlife if cities...

Building a new generation of nuclear reactors in Britain run on recycled fuel is a "no brainer", according to the government's former chief scientific adviser.

After the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the West nervously waited for similar uprisings in the "Arab Street." Practically nothing changed in the Arab world in the last 30 years. Yet, since the beginning of 2011, events in the Middle East have been unfolding at a dizzying pace.

Responding to continued protests, President Bashar Assad dissolves his government. An announcement is expected soon that a decades-old emergency law will be lifted and other restrictions loosened. The Syrian government resigned Tuesday as President Bashar Assad sought to stem a widening rebellion by promising to reform the police state that...