News Archive - 27 August 2012

>DUBAI Aug 27 (Reuters) - Iran indicated on Monday it might allow diplomats visiting Tehran for this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit to inspect the Parchin military base, which U.N. nuclear experts say may have been used for nuclear-related explosives tests.When asked about the possibility, Deputy Foreign Minister...

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>When asked about the chance that diplomats from the Non-Aligned Movement would visit the Parchin military base, Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, a deputy foreign minister, said: "Such a visit is not customary in such meetings ... however at the request of authorities, the country of Iran would be ready for such a...

>* Reports of more than 300 dead in suburb of Daraya* Assad: Syria will resist interference "no matter the cost"* Heavy shelling on Aleppo in north, Deraa in southBy Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Oliver HolmesAMMAN/ALEPPO, Aug 27 (Reuters) - A Syrian military helicopter came down in flames in Damascus on...

ROME - Italy's UniCredit bank has confirmed that U.S. authorities are investigating its German unit for possibly breaking economic sanctions, but stopped short of naming Iran as the country it was dealing with. The Financial Times over the weekend reported that the probe was into suspected sanctions

SOUTHAVEN — Local individuals are joining up with an Israeli organization stationed in Jerusalem, Israel, called Emergency Volunteer Project (EVP) which recruits volunteers who are trained for the purpose of helping that country in a time of emergency.

Ahead of the 16th NAM Summit, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna has said that India hopes to boost mutual cooperation with Iran especially in the economic sector.

International weapons sales by the United States tripled last year to a record high of $66.3 billion, according to a congressional report that noted big fighter jet and helicopter purchases by Saudi Arabia. The data by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service noted an "extraordinary increase" over 2010, saying the...

Ahead of the 16th NAM Summit, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna has said that India hopes to boost mutual cooperation with Iran especially in the economic sector. The remarks came ev...

International weapons sales by the United States tripled last year to a record high of $66.3 billion, according to a congressional report that noted big fighter jet and helicopter purchases by Saudi Arabia.

Mohamed Morsi's Tehran visit, the first by an Egyptian leader since 1979, is part of plan to form a regional contact group to broker peace in Syria.

(MENAFN - Arab Times) Ahmadi securitymen have arrested an Egyptian for the possession of a quarter kilo of heroin and some rolls of hashish. While patrolling the area, the securitymen got ...

Australia said Tuesday its new policy to deter asylum-seekers by shipping them to small Pacific islands would take time to work, after figures showed more than 1,000 boatpeople had arrived since it was adopted.

With UN initiatives mired in impotence over the Syrian crisis, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is pursuing his own diplomatic push. He has already…

(MENAFN - Arab Times) Two Asians were arrested in Farwaniya for the possession of 140 bottles of local alcohol. Securitymen asked the two Asians to stop for routine inspection. After checking ...

>* Possibility of U.S. reserves release subdues prices* Fed meeting, Bernanke's Friday speech in focus (Adds analyst quote, updates prices)By Ramya VenugopalSINGAPORE, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Brent oil futures were steady above $112 a barrel on Tuesday, supported by supply concerns after U.S. companies slashed crude production in...

Either Israel is engaged in the most elaborate ruse since the Trojan Horse or it is on the cusp of a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Sonia Gandhi is expected to rally the party behind Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by making a strong attack on BJP.

LONDON: Syria’s foreign minister accused the United States of being the “major player” encouraging anti-government rebels, but vowed the regime would not deploy chemical weapons in an interview published Tuesday.

Thailand mulled barter trade with Iran to avoid the consequence of the United States economic sanction against Tehran's nuclear ambition, Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said.

The Republican Party's convention began today, and one of the first stories to surface from Tampa, Fla., is the party's treatment of presidential primary candidate Ron Paul and his supporters.

SYDNEY: Australia said today its tough new policy to deter asylum-seekers by shipping them to small Pacific islands would take time to work, after the arrival of more than 1,000 boatpeople since it was adopted.

Standard Chartered isn’t done writing checks yet.The UK bank is bracing itself for as much as a $600 million fine to be levied by US regulators in the next few weeks, The Post has learned.The fine stems from a joint investigation alleging that the bank laundered $250...

BROADCASTERS in more than 100 countries have snapped up deals with organisers after rave reviews for London’s Olympics boosted demand

JERUSALEM — With his wife expecting their third child next month, Ram Gilboa, a sports commentator who lives just outside Tel Aviv, recently found himself jotting down a list of baby supplies that friends and family could buy: a crib, diapers … gas mask. “That’s not normal,” Gilboa, 32, recalled...

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour says Iran is the model of a strong country in the region and is pursuing a policy of independence and opposition to foreign interference.

Move reveals differences with UK and US, which have been more guarded in their dealings with Syrian opposition groups The French president, François Hollande, has urged Syria's divided opposition to form a provisional government, saying Paris would give it official recognition. The announcement on Monday came as Syrian fighter plane...

Gasoline prices rose by a dime a gallon in the Des Moines area on Monday, and could be headed higher as worries mount over the impact of a strengthening Isaac on Gulf Coast oil refineries. Gas map: Check gas prices around the state

This disappointing film, directed by an Iranian expatriate and featuring Farsi-speaking actors, tells the exotic story of a couple of beautiful Iranian teenagers, daughters of wealthy middle-class liberals, rebelling against the joyless, rigid mullahs and their humourless, intolerant followers. Crude and predictable but nevertheless affecting, it pales beside Persepolis ,...

The Imposter (15) (Bart Layton, 2012, UK) Frédéric Bourdin, Charlie Parker, Carey Gibson. 99 mins. Documentaries don't come much stranger than this. The film begins with the discovery in Spain in 1997 of a 16-year-old boy. Could this really be Nicholas Barclay, who went missing aged 13 from his home...

THE Hari Raya festive period is over and it is back to work for SMK Mutiara Impian as they set their sights on a double Cup final date.

ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 28 — Syrian fighter planes made rare sorties on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, killing at least 60 people in its eastern suburbs, the same day a Syrian military helicopter crashed while under rebel fire, activists said. They said aerial attacks by at least two fighter...

Bringing up the subject of the Holocaust at a dinner party can be a downer. Genocide is an unpleasant and apparently insoluble problem, and, when Jews raise it, they run the risk of seeming parochial, even narcissistic.

News that Pakistan Petroleum Limited has successfully reduced its annual depletion of output from five to three percent and is striving to reduce it to zero percent is good news in the short-term. It means availability of more gas in present times of acute shortage.

New Delhi, Aug. 27: They met. No, they didn’t. Hosts Iran today appeared to have pulled off what until now had looked impossible. Get Pakistan to agree to let Indian goods transit through its territory to Afghanistan, Iran and beyond.

A Facebook page inviting people to walk their dogs outside an east-Toronto mosque is becoming a hotbed of hostility.

Some key elements of the Republican platform, which is to be approved Tuesday at the party's national convention in Tampa, Fla.: "The American Dream is at risk," the platform opens.

Congress spokesman Manish Tewari took a dig at BJP saying if it was impatient at being out of power, it could bring a no-confidence motion against the government.

The changing attitude of ethical behavior Ethics professors at business schools aren't short of teachable moments these days.

The loose talk of war is back after a brief period of calm. This is stunning, as the facts about Iran's nuclear program have not changed since negotiations over its nuclear program began in April. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon nor is it on the verge of...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's new Islamist president said on Monday he would pursue a "balanced" foreign policy, reassuring Israel its peace treaty was safe, hinting at a new approach to Iran and calling on Bashar al-Assad's allies to help lever the Syrian leader out. Mohamed Mursi, who was elected in...

A powerful US lawmaker blasted the United Nations Monday as Sudan seemed set to gain a seat on the global body's Human Rights Council.

In May, after a round of interviews with senior Obama advisers, I concluded that they were, to a person, cautiously confident that their man could beat Mitt Romney. As I wrote then: “Because the popular vote is expected to be closer than it was four years ago, the Obama team...

SEOUL - Shares of Samsung Electronics suffered their biggest fall in a single day, in almost four years, after a jury in San Jose, California, ruled that the company had infringed on several Apple patents.

NEW YORK - International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) Monday announced plans to acquire Kenexa Corporation, a publicly held company headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in a cash transaction of $46 per share, or at a net price of approximately $1.3 billion.

LONDON - The Medical Research Council (MRC) will be providing Edinburgh University with 60 million pounds of funding over the next five years to enable scientists carry out genetic research with the aim of learning more about conditions like schizophrenia, cystic fibrosis and genetic eye disorders.

Bahrain’s Gulf Air, which has suffered losses in the wake of political unrest in the Gulf kingdom, said yesterday its performance improved in the first half of 2012, compared with a year ago, as it carried more passengers and cut costs.

The Philippines now has the second most number of titles won in the William Jones Cup tournament when the Smart-Gilas team garnered the gold medal, ...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has concluded that Iran was taking over Iraq's financial community. Officials said the U.S. Treasury Department, in cooperation with the intelligence community, was tracking Iranian takeovers of major Iraqi banks and other financial institutions.

Iran is hosting a summit for dozens of nations in the Non-Aligned Movement, while some of those countries are complying with U.S. and international sanctions against Tehran for its nuclear program. Iran says its atomic program is for peaceful purposes. Tehran's refusal to address international concerns about its atomic...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The threat of an Egyptian military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula marked a greater threat than Iranian nuclear weapons, a report said.

Salman Bashir on Monday cautioned New Delhi that internationalizing the issue of morphed images instigating violence against northeast people may not be in its interest.

Iran could allow representatives from nonaligned nations to visit a military site that the United Nations nuclear watchdog suspects has housed nuclear experiments.

According to a recent Flurry report, global smartphone adoption has exploded, growing faster than any consumer technology in history.

Head of Department of the Baltic States CIS countries Institute Mikhail Aleksandrov. Illustration: yerkramas.org Within the framework of the joint military exercises of the collective rapid reaction force of the collective security Treaty Organization, “Interaction-2012″ will be performed at least three scenarios: an Iranian, Georgian and Azerbaijani.

>Indian refiners have struggled to find insurance and shipping for Iranian oil imports since the European Union brought in sanctions banning most of the world's major insurance firms from covering Iranian oil shipments.MRPL, Iran's biggest Indian oil client, in July loaded only one cargo of 660,000 barrels compared with...

While they often differ on how to get there, there are several areas in which the two parties have common economic goals.

Indian lawmakers drown out India's prime minister as he defends government role in 'coalgate.' The coalgate controversy involves awarding coal-mining concessions without competitive bidding.

TEHRAN, Aug. 27 (MNA) – Cairo wants Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Egypt to meet for talks to work out how to end the 17-month conflict in Syria, Egyptian officials said on Sunday.

Almost 400 jobs could go after Ireland's largest privately-owned transport company College Freight announced that it is to cease trading.

Syrian Minister of State for National Reconciliation Affairs Ali Haidar has dismissed Western governments’ calls on President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The annual authorized trade in small arms has more than doubled in the past six years to $8.5 billion, driven by Americans buying more guns and ammunition and big military purchases for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a survey found on Monday. The Small...

NAM and PIF summits will take place around the same time

UN humanitarian coordinator: Improving the life of its people will have to mean 'the end of isolation and the end of conflict.'

PARIS (Reuters) - French banks BNP Paribas (BNP) and Credit Agricole are conducting internal inquiries into U.S. dollar payments to check whether they are potentially in breach of American sanctions, the banks said on Monday. Neither would confirm whether the inquiries concerned U.S. sanctions against Iran, which have...

Syria's seventeen-month-old political and humanitarian crisis has continued to deteriorate over the last several weeks, with heavy clashes between rebels and Syrian armed forces in the country's large cities.

BEIJING — The Japanese Embassy in Beijing said a car carrying the ambassador was attacked by a man who ripped off the Japanese flag from the vehicle. The attack comes amid rising diplomatic tensions and anti-Japanese sentiment over disputed islands. The embassy said in a statement that...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Brent crude oil futures fell toward $112 a barrel on Monday, reversing early gains as Tropical Storm Isaac shuttered refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, which reduced demand for crude. Traders were also eyeing the possibility of western governments releasing strategic oil reserves to moderate...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) issued a statement about MTN successfully pressuring the South African government into not voting to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the UN Security Council.

Tropical Storm Isaac is curtailing oil production along the Gulf of Mexico and threatening refineries, which could send already rising gasoline prices up another 10 cents in the coming week.

>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dropped plans to revise his investment portfolio, apparently concerned Israelis might think he was trying to avoid any personal financial loss should he opt to go to war with Iran. To prevent conflicts of interest, investments by the prime minister and other...

US authorities heed patent trolls' throaty call for action Chinese mobile comms giants Huawei and ZTE are in trouble with the US authorities again, this time as part of a wider patent investigation by the ITC which could result in some of their mobile device models being banned in the...

Iran will help India enter the markets of Central Asia to bypass Pakistan-about it, citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, Afghanistan.

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier U.S.S. John C. Stennis departs Bremerton Monday for an eight-month deployment to the Persian Gulf. For the sailors aboard the Stennis, the deployment comes four months ahead of schedule. The John C. Stennis Strike Group has been home since March, when they returned from...

King Abdullah leaves kingdom for unspecified time on foreign holiday; Prince Salman left in charge

Best Buy Co. Inc. and its founder and former chairman Richard Schulze say they have reached an agreement that will allow Schulze to pursue his plan to buy the nation's largest consumer electronics chain.

Former Haryana minister Gopal Goyal Kanda may have been evasive about his links with Geetika Sharma, but NDTV has accessed a video which shows Ms Sharma accompanying Mr Kanda at an election rally in S... Related Stories Highlights: Govt defends itself in coal controversy Man beheaded on train in West...

( Elsevier ) Research into water is growing faster than the average 4% annual growth rate for all research disciplines, claims a new report presented by Elsevier and Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) during the 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm.

>* Bill could unfreeze $1.75 billion for 1983 bomb victims* Washington suspects Iran role in US Marine barracks attack* Iran says sovereign immunity doctrine protects from payoutBy Basil KatzNEW YORK, Aug 24 (Reuters) - One way to win a court case is to get the United States Congress to...

Paul Ryan emits a certain Gen-X persona, but does he represent its politics?

Sheela Bhatt explains why Dr Manmohan Singh's visit to Iran for the Non-Aligned Summit will be closely watched around the world.

Paul Ryan's interests in Congress stretch beyond budgets to containing Iran

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian lawmakers chanting "quit prime minister" drowned out Manmohan Singh on Monday as he sought to defend his government's role in an affair dubbed "coalgate" that has paralysed parliament and created a sense of political crisis. Related Stories Assad's forces accused of massacre near Syrian capital...

>* Safety has improved but much to be done-U.N. nuclear chief* IAEA hosts conference aimed at enhancing nuclear standardsVIENNA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Improving global nuclear safety after last year's Fukushima disaster must remain an urgent concern, despite improvements already made, the U.N. atomic agency chief said on...

>* Sinopec to abide by U.S., UN rules on Iranian imports* Sees no big development in shale gas in next 5 yearsHONG KONG, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Sinopec Group, parent company of Asia's largest refiner, Sinopec Corp, is working on a plan to inject its overseas assets into...

>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli muppet on the cover of a new, emergency pamphlet being distributed nationwide puts a happy face on some grim warnings in a country preparing for possible war with Iran. Israelis, the military-issued booklet says, would have only between 30 seconds and three minutes to find...

As a retired official with very considerable high level international experience in Iran's state oil company - particularly in the Caspian area - I am bemused by the counter-productivity of Western sanctions and have long been an advocate of what I have termed "energy diplomacy".

Ankara has decided to boycott this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, which has been much maligned in the Western media despite the summit's potential to contribute to mediation efforts on the conflict in Syria.

DAMASCUS - A Syrian helicopter crashed in eastern Damascus on Monday, state television said, amid reports of shelling and fierce fighting in the area.

The underdog Smart Gilas squad found a way to conquer the Jones Cup for the first time since the Centennial Team back in 1998 (and the fourth time in the tournament’s 34 editions). And they did it in a very Filipino way. Bucking the odds and just leaving everything they...

It's been a shocking few days in the Syrian civil war, with hundreds of bodies reportedly found in Daraya and with the country's vice president -- who had allegedly defected -- suddenly showing up at an official meeting in Damascus. Here are some of the other latest key developments in...

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has expressed concern about the situation of the Muslims in Myanmar, announcing Tehran’s readiness to help reduce the ethnic tensions in the country.

BEIRUT — Row upon row of bloodied bodies wrapped in colorful blankets laid out on a mosque floor in a Damascus suburb. Long narrow graves tightly packed with dozens of victims. Nestled among them, two babies were wrapped in a single blood-soaked blanket, a yellow pacifier dangling beside them from...

FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab researchers say they made a mistake in saying Gauss-infected machines were being directed to servers used by Flame.