News Archive - 31 March 2011

> (Adds details, background)JOHANNESBURG, March 31 (Reuters) - South Africa's MTN Group (MTNJ.J) said on Thursday its outgoing chief executive officer Phuthuma Nhleko will step down as director of the group and from the boards of five major units. Nhleko is due to step down as the group CEO...

>BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has a better chance of surviving in power than the fallen authoritarian rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, provided he moves soon from repression to reform. Assad has so far followed the well-worn script tried unsuccessfully in several Arab states.His security forces have...

>VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. atomic agency may lack the diplomatic muscle to lead the world's response to Japan's nuclear crisis -- a weakness exposed by a French initiative on Thursday to launch a global review of industry rules. Just a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...

Iran's Majlis (Parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Commission on Thursday called on Saudi Arabia to pull its forces out of Bahrain, the official IRNA News agency reported.

Egyptian media outlets have hailed remarks by Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi regarding the promotion of Tehran-Cairo ties.

FILM

CAIRO — Egypt is a mess.

A former CIA agent accused of perjury and immigration fraud helped train Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s amid U.

On Saturday classic music lovers are invited to a concert offered by two classical music masters – Antal Szalai and Joszef Balog, - a treat which awaits us at the Radio Broadcasting Hall.

Bidtimes PLC - Proposed acquisition of PowerHouse Energy, Inc.

>NEW YORK (Reuters) - This week when President Barack Obama touted an initiative to slash U.S. oil imports by a third by 2020, he gave a major nod to a billionaire financier who could be central to the plans. T. Boone Pickens, 82, a Texas hedge fund manager and...

India has banned all trade in goods and technology that could help Iran's nuclear programme, a government statement said, seeking to align its policy at the UN Security Council where New Delhi is a non-permanent member.

Members of the Emory community gathered yesterday to hear Norman Finkelstein — an independent scholar of the Israeli-Palestine conflict — share his views on Israel’s ulterior motives behind the Gaza attack and the current political climate.

Quetta, Pakistan (AFP) March 31, 2011 Gunmen in Pakistan's troubled southwest opened fire on a tanker carrying oil for NATO forces in Afghanistan on Thursday, killing its driver and setting the vehicle ablaze, officials said. The attack took place near the town of Wadh in Khuzdar district, 360 kilometres south...

Kuwait City (UPI) Mar 30, 2011 Death sentences passed on two Iranians and a Kuwaiti for spying in the Persian Gulf emirate on behalf of Tehran has heightened suspicions that Iran has had a hand in the recent political upheaval in the strategic region. The heaviest clashes have taken place...

A second Iranian cargo airplane en route to Syria was forced to land in Turkey for an inspection, Turkish security services reported Sunday. This is the second forced landing of an Iranian plane in Turkey in the last week.

Turkey has confiscated from an Iranian cargo plane material which was illegal under United Nations sanctions on Iran, a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Copyright 2011 LARZ F. NEILSON That’s my lifeboat!” said Capt. Woodrow Wilson. “I spent ten days in that thing!” He was pointing at a picture of sailors on the deck of the SS Coloradan, pulling on a line. In the background was a lifeboat.

Jurors could begin deliberations today SANFORD — Employees pulled a black curtain across the courtroom, and a man slid onto the witness stand, invisible to everyone who sat in the gallery.

Reputation for evenhandedness has been lost with shift on Middle East, says group

At least six people were killed in a blast that went off Thursday evening in Turbet, a district in Pakistan's southwest province of Balochistan, reported local Urdu TV channel Samaa.

NEW DELHI, April 1 (Bernama) -- India Thursday amended its foreign trade policy to prohibit trade with Iran in material or equipment which can help Tehran's nuclear or ballistic missile programme, a step aimed at bringing the provisions in tune with the UN Security Council resolutions.

Rahim Seyedein, the owner Golden Pin Donuts, has retired and closed his shop, but not before the community showered him with gifts and raised more than one toast to show their appreciation for all the apple fritters and twists he served them and all the coffee they drank at his...

The French president's bellicosity masks his lack of substance.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said, there is no future without forgiveness; we might add there is no livable present without the possibility of repairing the past.

Iran's parliament speaker slams the West's offensive on Libya, saying the US involvement in the Libya war under President Obama resembles the Bush-era invasion of Iraq.

The Arab revolt is now in its fourth month and shows no signs of abating. The uprising that began in Tunisia and then Egypt has engulfed Libya, Algeria, Syria, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain and Yemen. There have even been rumblings in Saudi Arabia.

Cubic Corp has been around for years, but lately it has gotten attention of investors thanks to gains in its defense and transportation market niches

WASHINGTON —The bright line between old-fashioned and cutting-edge cyber attacks is the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive force reaching beyond cyber space.

NYT: Young people face an uncertain landscape, with Japan’s economy hobbled and its national pride bruised by triple disasters.

The writing’s on the wall for Arab leaders, and is if they want to survive, they will have to commit to real and meaningful change.

Donald Trump may be the only person in America to consider President Barack Obama a jingoist. In the final installment of his interview series with Bill O'Reilly the real estate magnate turned reality TV star turned 2012 hopeful pulled no punches on the President's foreign policy in the Middle East,...

Dictatorial rule and a bloody recent history should not blind us to the riches of Syria, says Simon Scott Plummer.

Cyber crime attacks now run at number two on the list of threats for local airlines, according to findings from one Sydney-based ethical hacking outfit.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) - A former CIA agent accused of perjury and immigration fraud helped train Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s amid U.S. fears that the Soviet Union would station submarines in that Central American country, a former Honduran military official testified Thursday.

KUWAIT, April 1 — Kuwait’s foreign minister said yesterday that it might expel three Iranian diplomats over a spying row, and that his government had withdrawn its ambassador from Tehran, but Iran denied having interfered in Kuwait’s internal affairs. Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah accused Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards of being...

WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers have undertaken the first non-Iraqi archaeological investigation of the Tigris-Euphrates delta in nearly 20 years, officials said.

Kuwait says it is to expel unspecified number of Iranian diplomats for alleged links to a spy ring working for Tehran.

The White House has struggled to explain why Libya warrants military action and Syria doesn't. The reasons involve national interest more than humanitarian concerns. Even as President Obama lays out his vision of America's obligations to civilians menaced by their own governments, the limits of what some are calling an...

NEW YORK: The price of oil rose to a 30-month high on Thursday as fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pushed back rebels from key areas in eastern Libya.

Littwin: Libya isn't Iraq , Obama says - unless it is

Every time the interior minister, Dr. Zulfikar Mirza, addresses the Sindh Assembly, he confirms his connections to the underworld. His latest victim of is a prominent media owner, against whom he used language that is quite unbecoming of a parliamentarian.

Propping up the bar in the Delhi Gym, roaring with laughter and knocking back Black Label were the Punjabis. On both sides of the border it’s their openheartedness, energy and kindness (and motto: “act first, think later”) that is so engaging. I love the sound of the earthy, expressive language.

A month of demonstrations that began in mid-February drew worldwide attention to the small Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain, one of a series of Arab countries to be swept up in a wave of protest movements. The demonstrations, which followed widespread uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, were fueled by...

"Humanitarian" seems to be the Democrats' new word for "absolutely no national interest."

The United Nations Human Rights Council drew rare praise from Jewish groups for creating a position for a special rapporteur on Iran — to investigate, monitor and recommend solutions.

Stuxnet concepts could give terrorists remote control.

SINGAPORE received arguably the worst possible draw in the second round of 2014 World Cup Asian qualifying.

For the first half of today's show, Glenn Beck went through a timeline to show how it was "inconceivable" that the Obama administration didn't know and possibly work for the upheaval in the Middle East. For most host's that would be enough. However, Beck didn't stop there. Oh no, he...

A Goldman Sachs report on global economics indicates that Iran is forecast to reach the highest economic growth between 2015 and 2025 and join the world's largest economies.

(03-31) 15:15 PDT El Paso, Texas (AP) -- A former Honduran military official is telling a Texas jury about an ex-CIA agent's exploits on behalf of the U.S. during the Iran Contra affair of the 1980s. Fernando Lardizabal...

AUTO CENTRAL - March 31, 2011: Nearly three years ago, Obama made a significant energy policy statement that, if he fulfilled, could have given his presidency some value.

The male camels, which can stand up to 2m tall and weigh up to half a tonne, go head to head in a 10-minute showdown as raucous crowds gamble on the outcome.

There is a war going on. It's a war against women. Beauty is under attack, not only the outward physical beauty but the deep femininity that exists within women. Today, after reading CNN's article about the 14-year-old Bangladeshi girl lashed to death, my reaction was one of outrage. Her...

Bombing Libya is in America's interest, even if President Obama can't explain why.The president's announcement, from a summit in Brasilia, was maddeningly vague even for his friends. There's a good reason for that.Obama's announcement was not really directed at the...

Ah, the uranium atom's siren song: Squeeze me, pelt me with particles, get critical with my mass and I will light your world, power your playpen. Forget those carbon-based posers -- so stable but so ... dirty. Their tawdry excuse for energy exchange literally warms the globe. All I want to...

BACKGROUND: Since the 1980s, Jonathan Schell has been battling for a nuclear-free world. In 1982, the American author wrote "The Fate of the Earth," a kind of bible for the peace movement, in which he warned against the consequences of nuclear war and the dangers of the arms race.

Local news and views.

Western Companies Enable Mideast Censorship Online . The OpenNet Inititative has released a report on the roles Western tech companies have played in enabling repressive Arabic regimes to filter and control the use of the Web by their citizens. In the report, authors Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York "find that...

The enemy of America's enemy is not her friend, but her enemy--contrary to what both liberals and co

>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Turkey has informed a U.N. Security Council panel that it seized a cache of weapons Iran was attempting to export in breach of a U.N. arms embargo, according to a document obtained by Reuters on Thursday. Security Council diplomats said the report of the...

The administration's theory of executive authority contradicts what Obama once said but replicates the Bush DOJ

Follow Israel news on and . The groundswell of political unrest sweeping the region has arrived in Kuwait, the fourth largest oil producer in OPEC. On Tuesday, the Kuwaiti cabinet resigned in the face of an allegedly “aggressive” parliament that asked to question three ministers.

Kuwait announced Thursday it is to expel a number of Iranian diplomats for alleged spying that dates back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq in a fresh blow for Arab-Persian ties across the Gulf.

Afghan authorities cleared of poppies eight hundred acres of land in various districts of southern Kandahar province as part of a provincial eradication campaign, Pajhwok Afghan News reported Thursday. The head of the counternarcotics campaign, Gul Muhammad Shukran, said the work would continue for two months in districts which had...

It would be wrong to say that efforts to grow energy independence never work. However, policy is not working nearly fast enough.

Dictatorial rule and a bloody recent history should not blind us to the riches of Syria, says Simon Scott Plummer

Japan's crude oil import in February grew 3.4% from a year earlier to 108.75 million barrels for the first rise in two months, the Natural…

Charles Darwin may have been talking about evolution when he said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Regardless, I think we can learn a lot as supply chain practitioners from this famous statement. To...

A new Harvard University study details how American and Canadian companies provided Internet filtering and monitoring software to the Iranian government, Mubarak's Egypt and other repressive states. It's still going on. Internet users in Egypt and Libya found themselves disconnected from the outside world thanks to “ kill switches ”...

NEW YORK — The price of oil rose to a 30-month high on today as fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pushed back rebels from key areas in eastern Libya. Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose $2.45, more than 2 percent, to settle at $106.72 a barrel on the...

David S. Addington leads one of the nation’s most respected teams of public policy researchers and analysts as vice president for domestic and economic policy at The Heritage Foundation.

North Vancouver’s Afshin Javid shares the story of his spiritual transformation from a teen soldier in Hezbollah to pastor of a Christian fellowship.

Egypt reminds Nicholas D. Kristof of other countries in transition to democracy. It's messy now — a young democracy always is — but it will settle down eventually.

The hacker who claimed credit for breaking into systems belonging to digital certificate vendor Comodo said he has compromised another certificate authority, along with two more Comodo partners, a move that could further undermine trust in the system used to secure websites on the Internet.

A senior Iranian lawmaker has described the re-establishment of official ties with Egypt as a significant opportunity for Iran's diplomatic apparatus.

Members of the media, Navistar officials and Navistar dealers gathered Wwednesday for a news conference at MATS. Soaring oil prices threaten to dampen the trucking industry's excitement about an economic upturn.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - The price of oil rose to a 30-month high on Thursday as fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pushed back rebels from key areas in eastern Libya.

> * New law to shield Syria's security, citizens' dignity-SANA * Critics say new law likely to be similar to old law * Opposition activists urge "Friday of Martyrs" protests * DAMASCUS, March 31 (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, facing a wave of protests demanding greater freedoms, took steps...

> No sanctions, however, are water-tight. The following is an update of Iran's response to them. GASOLINE Iran is OPEC's second biggest crude producer after Saudi Arabia, but its inadequate refinery infrastructure made it an importer of gasoline. After last year's wave of sanctions scared off many of Iran's regular...

>LONDON (Reuters) - After a first quarter in which seismic political upheaval in the Middle East has pushed oil prices up some $20 a barrel, investors and companies are struggling to gauge the political risks for the rest of 2011. While global equities look to be finishing the quarter in...

The dramatic changes in Turkish foreign policy and strategy in its regional and international relations in the first decade of the new century stand in sharp contrast with that of its immediate past. At no time since their days at the helm of the Ottoman Empire have Turks commanded...

Tehran, Mar 31 (AFP) Iranian security forces today arrested at least seven people at the funeral of the father of reformist opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, his website reported.

The first non-Iraqi archaeological investigation of the Tigris-Euphrates delta in 20 years was a preliminary foray by three women who began to explore the links between wetland resources and the emergence and growth of cities last year.

BASRA, Iraq (Dow Jones)-- Royal Dutch Shell PLC Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) along with its partners, Malaysia's Petronas and the Iraqi state Missan Oil Co., will start drilling the first new well in the super-giant Majnoon oil field in July, a company executive said Thursday.

On March 28, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the death-penalty case of Troy Anthony Davis. It was his last appeal. Davis has been on Georgia’s death row for close to 20 years after being convicted of shooting to death off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah. Since...

A Gazan engineer who was snatched from Ukraine appeared on Thursday before an Israeli court as officials confirmed he was interrogated over the missing soldier Gilad Shalit.

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait's cabinet resigned as expected on Thursday to avoid a grilling by parliament of three ministers, all members of the ruling al-Sabah family, amid calls for political and economic reform.

In the Death Sentences and Executions in 2010 report, Amnesty International officially recorded a total of 527 executions in 23 countries.

Ask the average middle or high school student if they would rather do algebra or play "Dragon Age II", and the video game option is going to win. But, if an innovative schooling idea called Quest to Learn (Q2L), spreads to the mainstream, future students might not have to choose.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, March 31 (UPI) -- Tehran may be meddling in Azeri affairs in an effort to keep Western energy investors at bay, a regional analyst said.

When the uprising broke out in Libya, Turkey first dismissed the idea of sanctions or any NATO military action, denouncing what it called Western designs on Libya's oil.

>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...

The international community has become further alarmed over the dangers of nuclear woes, following the earthquake that caused Japan's nuclear reactors to melt down.

The violent crackdown on protests casts doubt on the government's promises of reform.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah denied on Thursday it had given military training to Shi'ite Bahraini protesters who have been demanding reforms in the Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab kingdom.

Kuwait has recalled its ambassador from Tehran a day after a court condemned to death three people it convicted of spying for Iran, Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah was quoted as saying Wednesday.

As the Nowruz holiday which marks the new year in Iran got under way, the Turkish tourist industry geared in the hope of receiving record numbers of visitors.

The National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) has warned against Saudi Arabia's invasion of Bahrain, calling on Riyadh to leave the Persian Gulf state.

The birth pangs of a new Middle East are being felt, but not in the way many outsiders envisioned, writes Mohammed Khan No sooner did former US president George W. Bush come into power in January 2001 than a much vaunted neo-conservative doctrine came into full swing, wreaking havoc across...