News Archive - 29 June 2012

Oil prices have risen more than 9 percent on concerns about the potential results of sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and the strong gains in world stock markets on the back of the recent European Union summit. The oil surge happened on Friday when heavy trading led to the fourth...

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad reiterates that the sole way to resolve Syria's current crisis would be through a “national model.” “What took place in Libya is not the model to settle Syria [crisis] and no plan or model except a 'national model' will work in Syria,” said President Assad...

Egypt’s president-elect Mohamed Morsi has addressed nation in the capital Cairo's iconic Liberation Square, vowing that Egypt “will be independent from any foreign influence.” "We will complete the journey in a civil state, a nationalist state, a constitutional state, a modern state," said Morsi to tens of thousands of...

IRI Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi said that if South Korea completely cuts its import of crude oil from Iran, Tehran will reconsider its diplomatic relations with Seoul. Qassemi made the remarks to IRNA correspondent in the Iranian port city of Genaveh on Thursday. “I.R.Iran is one of the...

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan have discussed the latest developments regarding the Syrian crisis. In a Friday telephone conversation, Annan elaborated on the latest viewpoints to be deliberated upon during an international conference on Syria on Saturday in Geneva, and underscored the importance...

The more sanctions are imposed against I.R.Iran, the more united and flourishing the Iranian nation becomes, Tehran provisional Friday Prayers Leader Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi said. Addressing thousands of worshippers at Tehran University Campus, Mr. Seddiqi said in his second sermon, ”Countries which impose sanctions should know that Iran...

FarsNews: The European Union which buys 18% of the Iranian crude oil is scheduled to implement an oil embargo against Iran on July 1 but the move is more likely to be symbolic rather than a serious measure since major Iranian oil customers have been exempted from Iranian oil ban.

People who put on weight are more likely to develop knee pain than those who stay the same or lose weight, says a new study. People who shed pounds saw only a modest improvement in knee pain, however, researchers from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, found. "Preventing weight gain, almost...

AFP: As markets cheered a late-night eurozone deal hailed as a pleasant surprise, analysts were already sounding a more sober tone in the cold light of day Friday, warning euphoria could prove short-lived. After tense and seemingly never-ending talks, eurozone leaders clinched a dawn deal they hoped would reduce the...

Austria's trade deficit more than doubled in 2011 to 9.23 billion euros ($11.62 billion), the national statistics office said Friday, citing a hike in the value of imported goods. In 2010, Austria's deficit was 4.28 billion euros. "This increase was in great part due to a hike...

Japan's factory output fell by a bigger-than-expected 3.1 percent in May from the previous month, official data released Friday showed, suggesting a stall in its fragile economic recovery. The market had expected industrial production to slip 2.8 percent in the month, according to a survey of economists by...

Saudi-backed Bahraini regime forces once again attacked people protesting against the Al Khalifa rule in towns and villages outside the capital, Manama. Bahraini protesters took to the streets in several areas on Thursday, despite the regime's ongoing brutal crackdown, according to Press TV. The regime's forces clashed with protesters, firing...

>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - After more than a month's delay due to Chinese objections, the United Nations on Friday published a report on North Korea that says a panel of independent experts is investigating reports of possible North Korean arms deals with Syria and Myanmar. The 74-page report, which was...

>* Sanctions on Iran becoming more complicated* Diplomacy making little headway in nuclear standoffBy Justyna PawlakBRUSSELS, June 29 (Reuters) - A European Union embargo on Iranian oil comes into effect on Sunday with Western governments hopeful economic pain will persuade Tehran to scale back its nuclear work but also mindful...

Beirut -- Tomorrow, in the presence of the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council, in addition to Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar, as well as the Secretary-Generals of both the United Nations and the League of Arab States, a serious race will start in...

>LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC's oil output has fallen in June as Western sanctions have pushed Iran's supply to its lowest level in more than two decades, relegating the country to OPEC's third-largest producer behind Iraq, a Reuters survey found on Friday. Production from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries...

>* Iran warning West not to attack it over its nuclear workDUBAI, June 29 (Reuters) - Iran expects to equip its ships in the Strait of Hormuz soon with shorter-range missiles, a Revolutionary Guards commander was quoted as saying, in the latest apparent warning to the West not to attack...

>By Humeyra PamukDUBAI, June 29 (Reuters) - Turkey's crude oil imports from Iran dropped by more than 35 percent in May from April as it steps up efforts to ensure the United States waives sanctions on its imports of Iranian oil for the remainder of this year.Official trade data...

>(Reuters) - Egypt's army will continue to be the guardian and ultimate arbiter of the state after moving to secure real power before the victory of Mohammed Mursi, the Islamist president who triumphed in last week's election run-off. While the generals saw no alternative to respecting the popular vote for...

>* Gazprom says Turkey will have to ask Azerbaijan for help* Gazprom increases gas flows to Turkey after cuts from IranMOSCOW, June 29 (Reuters) - Gazprom on Friday sent a warning signal to its second-largest gas consumer Turkey over Ankara's agreement with neighbouring Azerbaijan to built a gas pipeline to...

>* Norwegian union leaders meet to discuss esclating strike* Coming up: CFTC weekly traders data at 1930 GMT (Changes dateline, updates throughout)By Jessica DonatiLONDON, June 29 (Reuters) - Oil rallied with other commodities and the euro on Friday, rising over $2 after European leaders agreed on a strategy to tackle...

I propose “privatizing” marriage in Israel, not in the capitalist sense of letting a corporation profit from government responsibilities, but by restoring civil liberties and privacy to the individual.

• Dozens killed in new alleged massacre in Douma • Russia proposes changes to Annan's transition plan • Morsi recites presidential oath to Tahrir crowd • Read the latest summary 5.30pm: Here's a roundup of the latest developments: Syria • Activists say dozens have been killed in attacks on...

Tehran giants Esteghlal are in talks with Osasuna's Iran international midfielder Javad Nekounam according to reports.

Persepolis will name former Iran international and current club sporting director Ali Parvin as its new coach according to reports.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan have discussed the latest developments regarding the Syrian crisis.

China reiterated its opposition to unilateral sanctions against Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Friday, after Washington exempted China and Singapore from sanctions over purchases of oil from Iran.

A DHS emergency team cited a jump in cyberattacks against companies owning critical infrastructure, but some observers cautioned against panic.

EUGENE, Oregon, EE.UU. (AP) Emma Coburn conquistó el viernes su segundo título nacional consecutivo en la carrera de 3.000 metros con obstáculos y ganó un lugar en el equipo de atletismo de Estados Unidos que participará en los Juegos Olímpicos

Anheuser-Busch to buy

GENEVA World powers meet Saturday in a desperate bid to salvage international envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria to end 16 months of bloodshed and agree on a transition plan for the strifehit country.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin managed to take control of a small drone by mimicking a signal sent to its GPS and giving it new commands, thus proving that anyone can hijack unmanned aircraft.

Senate votes for greater military support of Israel including what could be seen as direct support for an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Istanbul (AFP) June 29, 2012 Turkey is to pick a new long-range air defence missile system soon, as tension builds with neighbouring Syria, media and foreign diplomats said Friday. Companies vying for the four billion dollar (3.2 billion euro) contract include Raytheon and Lockheed Martin of the United States,...

Beirut (AFP) June 29, 2012 The rebel Free Syrian Army said on Friday that Syrian troops were massing near the Turkish border amid tensions since Syria's downing of a Turkish jet last week. "There are military units massing 15 kilometres or slightly more (10 miles), from the Turkish border, in...

NEWARK — A federal jury in New Jersey has convicted an Iranian man of illegally transmitting money back to Iran. The U.S. Attorney's Office charged Mahdi Socara with operating a 'hawala' money transmitting business with his father, who lives in Tehran.

Says excluding Iran from talks on Syria was not in the interest of those attempts to resolve the crisis.

Researchers demonstrate how to remotely commandeer a drone in flight by tricking its GPS signals.Last year a U.S. military drone doing reconnaissance in Iran disappeared. Iranian government officials there said they had steered the device off course by interfering with its GPS signals.

WASHINGTON, June 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will not start a new round of talks on further arms reductions until Washington changes its stance on the global deployment of U.S. missile defenses, especially in Europe, a senior Russian diplomat said.

President-elect Mohammed Morsi roused the masses in Tahrir Square on Friday, vowing to fight on behalf of the people and defying the ruling generals by reading a symbolic oath of office a day early at the site where Egypt's revolution was born.

CAIRO — Egypt’s foreign policy under its first Islamist president is likely to change in tenor but not substance, at least in the short term, as the new government can ill afford to strain relations with the U.S. or risk international furor by abandoning Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with...

Syrian troops bombarded a suburb of Damascus with tank and artillery shells yesterday, killing dozens of people during a bloody few days across the country, activists said.

There has been such a deluge of coverage of Egypt upheavals over the past few days that anything more on the issue risks provoking yawns and groans from my distinguished readers. In our tedium though, it’s hard to ignore the history being made and enacted right before our eyes.

AMID extremely charged atmosphere caused by the most recent developments in the Syrian crisis, Russia has told mediator Kofi Annan that it would support the idea of a Syrian national unity government.

With Canada Day just around the corner some new residents just couldn’t wait for the festivities to begin.

The agency notified Armstrong, former team manager Johan Bruyneel and several other Armstrong team associates of the charges in a letter on Thursday. The charges came after a USADA review panel examined evidence in the case, which now goes to an arbitration panel to decide.

Secretary of State Clinton fails to sway her counterpart on an assertive global role in ending the violent conflict. BEIRUT — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats failed to bridge critical differences about Syria during talks in Russia on Friday, leaving prospects uncertain for a high-level international "action group"...

All indicators reveal that the Turkish fighter was downed by Russian and rather than Syrian defenses. The incident came as a reaction to the Syrian pilot who fled in his Russian-made plane to Jordan.

A SELECTION of “exceptional clocks” collected by “an Irish gentleman while he travelled the world before the Great War” (1914-1918) is to be auctioned at Christie’s in London next week. The clocks were bought in “Peking, Tehran, St Petersburg, Lahore and many other places and were kept in his home...

Zephyr Reports on M&A and Private Equity Activity in H1 2012 (PRWeb June 29, 2012) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/6/prweb9658185.htm

NEW YORK: Oil surged on Friday in heavy trading to the fourth biggest daily gain on record, as a deal by European leaders to shore up euro zone banks triggered frantic short-covering by funds that had been riding crude's price collapse over the last quarter.

Billy Eichner hit the streets of New York recently to find out what the locals think of Iran building nuclear weapons and if the U.S. should step in with military action... and also to find out what they think of Madonna. He then gets whisked over to Tel Aviv...

The feat raises alarm about the new federal mandate that allows for up to 30,000 drones to patrol U.S. skies with little discretion by the end of the decade. Raising alarm is precisely what Texas assistant professor Todd Humphreys wanted his students to accomplish.

The top U.S. military officer says the U.S. and Israel will hold a major missile defense exercise in October.

Iran could be a “heavyweight champion” of efforts to bring peace to Syria, Iran’s UN ambassador said yesterday, renewing criticism of his country’s exclusion from international talks on the conflict.

AFP/Tehran Leila is getting pretty good at playing Angry Birds on her imported iPhone. Sitting behind her desk in an idle travel agency in central Tehran, she often has nothing better to do these days.

I have always viewed the 5th Avenue Apple store in New York City with a special reverence. Co-designed by the legendary Steve Jobs, the 24 hour techy market is surrounded day and night by Apple fans and tourists year round. It is so popular that just last year one...

U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf has expressed confidence that an amendment restricting former U.S. government officials from lobbying on behalf of certain foreign nations will soon become law. Wolf said Friday that countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iran, among others, need to be reminded that their government...

President Obama says his White House would never leak really important secrets -- and anyway wasn't the press just doing its job of keeping us informed?

The Justice Department has declared that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to withhold information about a bungled gun-tracking operation from Congress does not constitute a crime and he won't be prosecuted for...

Free vaccines for kids, cheaper drugs for the elderly and many other benefits of President Barack Obama's health care law are already out there. More are coming, like a guaranteed right to buy health insurance even for...

Republicans in at least three states want to abandon an expansion of Medicaid in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, and more than a dozen other states are considering it in the wake of the Supreme Court...

Iran's ambassador to the U.N. said Friday some of the parties to talks on his country's nuclear program are not serious enough to find a solution to the impasse.

Some 25,000 sailors and other military personnel from 22 nations are converging on Hawaii to practice hunting for submarines and catching pirates over the next five weeks in the world's largest naval exercises.

City officials are grilling San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi (meer-kah-REE'-mee) about his conversations with his wife and campaign manager days after he bruised his wife's arm in an alleged domestic violence...

A senior Iranian commander says US President Barack Obama’s support for the UAE claims over Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf does not change the reality of Iran's sovereignty over three islands.

Cyber superweapon, reportedly developed by America, found on U.S. systems.

Oil Futures Surge on EU Hopes

Plus, uncompromising photos expose juvenile detention in America and bail burdens keep U.S. jails stuffed with inmates. by Cora Currier, ProPublica The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We've rounded up some of the best investigative journalism on U.S. prisons and the problems that...

Oil jumped more than 6 percent on Friday, headed for its biggest daily gain in more than a year after European leaders hammered out a deal to shore up euro zone banks, but crude was also headed for its steepest quarterly decline since the financial crisis.

Tehran (AFP) June 29, 2012 Leila is getting pretty good at playing Angry Birds on her imported iPhone. Sitting behind her desk in an idle travel agency in central Tehran, she often has nothing better to do these days. "As you can see, business isn't so good," she says, gesturing...

QUETTA, PAKISTAN : Fourteen people were killed on Thursday when a suicide car bomber struck a bus carrying pilgrims in southwestern Pakistan, police said on Friday. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mohamed Morsi’s election as President of Egypt is certainly a victory for democracy, but is it a victory for the Egyptian economy?

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi says the anti-Iranian sanctions have given indigenous manufacturers the opportunity to take over the county’s oil industry from big foreign firms.

NEW YORK — The price of oil soared after European leaders took unexpectedly aggressive steps to support the region’s beleaguered banking sector.

This week, the nation's top intelligence official announced that the government is expanding its use of the polygraph to expose federal employees. The testing could put intelligence workers at risk of being falsely stigmatized.

SLAMonline will host a live stream of Jordan Brand's Paris-based streetball event.

>The Foreign Ministry also said in a statement that agreement on a ceasefire and the withdrawal of government troops and rebel forces from cities would create a "favorable atmosphere" for a political transition.Although the ministry welcomed the convening of the talks as a positive move, the statement pointed to...

DAVAO City's Fide Master (FM) Austin Jacob Literatus recovered in the fifth and sixth rounds to share the third to seventh place in the ongoing Asian Youth Chess Championship 2012 at Hotel Chaya, Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka as of Friday.

That actually was not the only lie that got Alvarez in trouble. He served a prison term for misappropriating district funds by qualifying his ex-wife for insurance benefits by claiming they were still married.

HAIFA, Israel — Grinning and waving, 14 women who survived the horrors of World War II paraded Thursday in an unusual pageant, vying for the honour of being crowned Israel’s first “Miss Holocaust Survivor.” Billed by organizers as a celebration of life, the event also stirred controversy. In a...

These days, Iranians’ relations with America are somewhat schizophrenic – the government is stridently anti-American, but many Iranians are not. A popular dentist in an affluent part of Tehran represents the love-hate relationship many Iranians feel toward the U.S.

European Union leaders on Friday urged Iran to decide if it wants 'serious' talks on its disputed nuclear programme, as rhetoric between the two sides ratcheted up ahead of the entry into force of an embargo on Iranian oil Sunday.

The energy picture in the Middle East.

ANTAKYA (Turkey), June 29 — Helicopter gunships bombarded a strategic town in northern Syria overnight and tanks moved close to the commercial hub of Aleppo, rebels said, but kept well clear of new Turkish air defences installed to curb Syrian action near its frontiers. Turkish commanders inspected the missile batteries...

>* Iran is leading exports destination* Trade deficit confirms gradual narrowing in c/a deficit (Adds details, background, quotes)ISTANBUL, June 29 (Reuters) - Turkey's trade deficit fell 15.5 percent in May from a year earlier on the back of falling commodity prices and strong gold exports, data showed on Friday,...

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil rallied with other commodities and the euro on Friday, rising by $3 a barrel after European leaders agreed on a strategy to tackle soaring borrowing costs in Italy and Spain, but it was still set for the deepest quarterly loss since 2008.

Denmark's term as EU president comes to an end this weekend, when it hands over the baton to Cyprus. Tiny Cyprus, a country still divided after the Turkish invasion 38 years ago, and with its economy in recession, will nevertheless be hoping to prove it can carry its weight as...

PRAGUE - The Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary is kicking off its annual international film festival with awards for British actress Helen Mirren and U.S. actress Susan Sarandon The two international stars will be honoured for their outstanding contributions to world cinema. Over the next week,...

With up to 28,000 media people expected, organisers of the London 2012 summer Olympics have had to plan for everything from technology to beer rations.

Iran has offered to help Turkey repair a section of the natural gas transmission line, which was damaged in an explosion earlier this week.

In the years that Christmas Island has transformed from a little-known phosphate-mining outpost with hopes of becoming an eco-tourism paradise to what is effectively a prison staging camp, the stampede of government officials and police has placed almost unbearable pressure on the place.

MOSCOW, June 29 (UPI) -- Moscow confirmed Friday that it gave its consent for NATO to use an air base as a transit hub for operations in Afghanistan.

# americasscreamingconscience Yesterday, a man named LZ Granderson had an interesting take on the Fast and Furious controversy developing between the congress and the attorney general's office. It's a debacle, he says, and we absolutely should not get to the bottom of it. More »

>DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai's national oil company may have to stop importing condensate from Iran unless Washington grants it an exemption or temporary exception from this week's tightening of U.S. sanctions, diplomatic and industry sources said. U.S. State Department officials said that financial transactions that facilitate the import...