News Archive - 21 May 2011

On Sept. 11, 2001, Brooke Chandler, a WASP of old blood, old money and the privilege that accompanies them, was a graduate student in Near Eastern Studies in New York. But after watching the Twin Towers fall, he changed his life and joined the CIA. His girlfriend, beautiful Israeli student ...

While we cannot know the future and can misread the tea leaves from time to time, I am compelled to make a statement that I am sure will turn some heads.

Intelligence officers working as double agents infiltrated the spy ring and made arrests, Tehran says.

One of the federal government’s most powerful weapons in its fight against terror has been a former Toledoan who is a self-described nerd.R. Richard “Rick” Newcomb, a high-powered Washington attorney who served as the U.S. Treasury Department’s office of foreign assets control director from 1987-2004, delivered Friday’s keynote...

The dispute between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ignites concern inside the nation that the infighting weakens Iran's ability to project power internationally amid historic instability across the Mideast. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted to send his onetime protege Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an unmistakable message: You're replaceable.

When protests spread to the tiny island kingdom, they were met by a government crackdown. Saudi Arabia sent troops to help quell the demonstrations. The U.S. had been muted in its public criticism until President Obama's speech Thursday. Still, it's unclear whether his warning will have an...

Manama: Kuwait has banned nationals from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan from entering the country, local media reported. The ban includes suspending all tourism, visit and trade visas as well as visas sponsored by spouses, immigration sources said, quoted by Kuwaiti media yesterday.

MANAMA - Bahrain Minister of Foreign Affairs Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa said on Saturday that his country has frozen the gas import agreement with Iran until further notice.

WILLIAM Dillard, founder of Dillard`s Department Stores, the third-largest department-store chain in the US, made famous the slogan `Location, location, location` which gained worldwide application in retail, restaurant and real-estate businesses — emphasising the need to be geographically in the right place to gain and maintain commercial success.

Qatar's economy galloped by 18.5 per cent in 2010 and growth is expected to remain as high as 18 per cent this year before plunging to a single-digit rate in the following two years, according to a western report.

Russia said yesterday that it may be ready to drop its objections to the US-backed missile defence shield for Europe if it receives a formal security pledge from the United States.

Bahrain has frozen plans to import natural gas from Iran over what it sees as Iranian “interference” in the kingdom, the Bahraini foreign minister was yesterday quoted as saying.

The final withdrawal of British forces from Iraq takes place today – eight years after UK service personnel entered the country.

President Obama has offered a lofty, unified policy of support for popular risings in the Middle East. Can it survive in a complicated world of friends and foes?

The Iranian intelligence ministry said yesterday that it had made 30 arrests as it dismantled a network suspected of spying for the US on its basic infrastructure as well as its nuclear and defence research.

An Iranian court has barred a vice president and ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from holding office for “violations” in a previous job, the semi-official Fars news agency said yesterday, in a blow to the president.

Iran called the United States the biggest loser from the upheaval in the Middle East on Friday, a day after President Barack Obama made a speech reaching out to Arab people seeking greater democracy.

As President Barack Obama arrives in the UK on Tuesday for his first official state visit – after a pilgrimage to Ireland tomorrow – we offer our guide to the talks, walks, power and glamour we can expect over the next week.

"The State Department is a fitting venue to mark a new chapter in American diplomacy. For six months, we have witnessed an extraordinary change take place in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Cannes Film Festival closes tonight, and it has been an especially strong year. Even so, it's taken till this final weekend for critics to start muttering the M-word – "masterpiece". The longest, and arguably the slowest, film in the competition, the Turkish entry Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,...

TEHRAN – Iran has arrested 30 people it said were spying for the United States, official media reported on Saturday. "The Intelligence Ministry's active and pious forces, in their ardent confrontations with the agents of the CIA ... arrested 30 people who were spies for America," state television's lunchtime news...

>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told President Barack Obama on Friday his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic, exposing a deep divide that could doom any U.S. bid to revive peace talks. In an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel's closest ally,...

>The oil reserve was found at Khayyam field off the Gulf shore in Hormuzgan province. It was originally discovered in 2010 but was classified only with natural gas reserves."The volume of in-place oil at this field is 758 million barrels of which around 22 percent, or some 170 million...

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) The Export-Import (Exim Bank) today said it is negotiating a USD 100 million loan from multi-lateral lending agency Asian Development Bank (ADB) for funding activities of the SME units in backward states."We are negotiating the agreement of USD 100 million from the ADB. The...

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Barack Obama against chasing what he called a Middle East peace "based on illusions" as he lectured the US president amid a widening rift in US-Israeli ties.

Barack Obama says he wants change in the Arab world yet insults us with the same old bad policies This wasn't slipping poison into the honey; it was smearing chemical sweeteners on to toxic pellets. Barack Obama listed what he sees as his country's "core interests" in my country Egypt...

TEHRAN, 21 MAY, 2011: A senior Iranian legislator announced that the Kuwaiti government has decided to release a number of Iranian nationals held in the country's prisons on different charges, Iran's Fars News Agency (FNA) reported.

Network of "spies" controlled through US embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Malaysia, ministry says. Iran has arrested 30 people it says were engaged in a "complex espionage and sabotage network" run by the United States, state media reported.

Banned Iranian director who received prison sentence for criticising regime stars in movie smuggled out of Iran Most prints for films premiering at Cannes are delivered to the Croisette by private helicopter, or clutched in the sweaty paws of their devoted directors. Jafar Panahi's new film, This Is Not a...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disregard for the constitution has brought him up against both the supreme leader and parliament This week the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took his challenge against the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to a new high by warning that Khamenei would be powerless without public support. "The leader's hands...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner speaks during a press conference. Geithner announced that the Social Security Board of Trustees estimates that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust funds will be exhausted by 2036. (PHOTO CREDIT: SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES) FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty: The U.S. government officially hit...

With the impending price increase of RON 95, a round of price hikes involving other goods is also imminent. Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has urged the general population to be thrifty and to do some belt-tightening. But for the nation's poor, the way the belt is being tightened, it...

WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday. The newly disclosed plot showed that while...