News Archive - 9 June 2011

>WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it had sanctioned Iran's national police force and police chief and two other security forces for serious rights violations since Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election. The sanctions, announced by the U.S. departments of State and Treasury, apply to...

>VIENNA (Reuters) - Economics, rather than politics was behind the collapse of this week's OPEC talks and the group as a whole would act if it grew worried about oil supplies running short, a top OPEC official said on Thursday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries met for the...

>VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States said Iran's plan to shift nuclear activity to an underground bunker showed its "brazen" and deepening defiance of international demands to curb work seen by the West as geared to producing atom bombs. Iran's envoy hit back at a meeting of the International Atomic...

>VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog board reported Syria to the Security Council on Thursday for covert atomic work, a U.S.-led move coinciding with Western condemnation of Damascus's crackdown on opposition protests. Russia and China voted against the proposal at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),...

>VIENNA (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia was swayed by pressure from the West to push for higher OPEC oil output, Iran said after it rallied others member to resist the move and the group's Wednesday meeting fell apart. Refuting Saudi accusations of obstinacy in the bitter aftermath, OPEC governor Mohammad Ali...

>An Iranian Foreign Ministry official told British charge d'affaires Jane Marriott that accusations leveled by Foreign Secretary William Hague were "without any evidence or reason," the official IRNA news agency reported.Hague told parliament this week that Tehran, an ally of Syria in its support for anti-Israel militant groups Hamas...

> The sanctions, announced jointly by the U.S. departments of State and Treasury, apply to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij Resistance Force, Iran's Law Enforcement Forces and its commander Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam. The sanctions would freeze any of the targets' assets under U.S. jurisdiction and bar...

>Up to 90 percent of the world's wheat is susceptible to the strain of stem rust, called Ug99, first detected in Uganda in 1999. The oval, brick-red lesions of stem rust sap wheat plants and cut yields by 50 to 70 percent over wide areas and can destroy entire fields.

Pro-democracy activists are vowing to stage more protests against President Bashar al-Assad, as his regime comes under mounting international pressure.

Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned on Thursday Britain's Charge d'affaires to Tehran Jane Marriott over what it called the "baseless remarks" of British Foreign Secretary William Hague about Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Mark C. Toner Deputy Spokesperson Daily Press Briefing Washington, DC June 9, 2011 MR. TONER: Welcome to the State Department. And welcome all of you. We need to be a little bit quick.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi dismissed on Thursday France's allegations that Iran has enriched uranium beyond the level of 20 percent, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Denial-of-service attack comes ahead of an election in Turkey and plans for a new Internet censorship program.

ISLAMABAD, June 9: The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) will include in the national database children having unknown parentage under the names of their guardians.

(RTTNews) - The Thai stock market on Thursday finally was able to snap the brutal losing streak that had stretched to seven sessions and cost it more than 60 points or 6.3 percent. The Stock ...

I am once again reading that a group of fanatics from a small church is still bent on disrupting military funerals. They say God is punishing America for allowing homosexuality, and they are protesting funerals of service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

KUALA LUMPUR, June 10 — A Malaysian company with links to Iran tried to buy gyroscopes used for guiding missiles from China, according to a leaked United States diplomatic cable.

>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia must perform a high-stakes tightrope act in the second half of this year: pump just enough extra oil to meet a seasonal rise in demand, but not so much that it calls attention to a thinning cushion of spare capacity. Following an extraordinary failure...

> * Paramount Pictures is making an eleventh-hour social-media push to build buzz for the Abrams-Spielberg movie "Super 8," placing a late bet that word-of-mouth will be good. * The government's pension guarantee program has joined a lawsuit against Morgan Stanley over the firm's handling of investments for a New...

>LONDON (Reuters) - Increasingly worried about criminal hacking and state-on-state electronic warfare, governments are rushing to come up with cyber security strategies. But with the Internet crossing borders and empowering non-state groups from criminals to activists, nation states appear to be inherently stuck behind the curve.Policymakers acknowledge to a...

Dubai - UAE, June 09, 2011 - SAMENA Telecommunications Council, the South Asia, Middle East and North Africa region's telecom operators' representative body and European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO), the European telecom operators' industry association, earlier today discussed various ways of ensuring the sustainability of the Internet and the...

Germany's April industrial output down 0.6%

Only in a world so upside down could the "Beautiful Game" be used as an instrument of Islamophobia. Football is the great global game: the closest thing we have to a connective cultural tissue that binds our species across national and cultural borders.

SINGAPORE - Oil prices rose above $101 a barrel Thursday in Asia, extending gains from the previous session after OPEC leaders unexpectedly left crude production quotas unchanged.

BRUSSELS — NATO and Russia clashed again over the alliance's plan to build a missile defense system, but NATO's leader said he was optimistic the two sides could iron out their differences in time for a summit next May.

President Barack Obama will hold talks with another African leader on Thursday.

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Meeting broke down on economic not political differences. 9 Jun 2011 9:51 PM