News Archive - 30 December 2012

پرسپولیس در بازی با فجر سپاسی در ثانیه 12 توسط غلامرضا رضایی به گل رسید تا سریع ترین گل این فصل را ثبت کند. در لحظه ای که پرسپولیسی ها گل اول را زدند، صدا و سیما همچنان در حال پخش آگهی های بازرگانی بود و بیننده های تلویزیونی از...

>DUBAI Dec 30 (Reuters) - A small U.S. commercial plane has been stuck in Iran for nearly three weeks after making an emergency landing near the city of Ahvaz, the country's airports director said on Sunday.The plane was forced to land because of technical problems, Mahmoud Rasoulinejad said,...

>* Brent set to average above $111/bbl in 2012, vs $110.91 last year* U.S. crude 2012 average at $94/bbl, down from $95.11 in 2011By Florence TanSINGAPORE, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Oil slipped on Monday for a third straight session, with Brent holding above $110 per barrel, on...

>(Reuters) - A major Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies offered to sell at least 1.3 million euros worth of embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator in late 2010, documents show. China's Huawei, the world's second largest telecommunications equipment maker, says neither it nor its partner, a...

>RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Bodyguards for Iraq's deputy prime minister wounded two people when they fired warning shots at Sunni protesters who pelted his convoy with bottles and stones on Sunday, witnesses said. The incident took place in the city of Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, to where...

>* Says nothing in his record would disqualify him from defense chief positionBy Jeff MasonWASHINGTON, Dec 30 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama offered strong support for former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as the potential next U.S. defense secretary but said in remarks aired on Sunday that he had not...

>The highly-publicized "Velayat 91" exercises are taking place across a wide area from the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil and gas shipping route, to the Gulf of Oman and northern parts of the Indian Ocean.Naval commanders have made regular appearances on Iranian television since Friday saying the six-day...

>QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded on Sunday near a convoy of buses taking Pakistani Shia pilgrims to Iran, killing 20 people and wounding 24, officials said, the latest attack on the minority sect. Witnesses said the blast occurred as the three buses were overtaking a car about...

MARTIN WALKER || UPI Editor Emeritus PARIS, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The new year is not beginning well and challenges -- including food security, economies and political upheaval -- face the Earth.

From Tokyo and Bangkok to Muscat and London, Japan's national teams demonstrated why they finished the year as Fifa's top-ranked Asian nation with memorable performances

The body of an Indian sailor, who drowned in the sea following an Indian vessel sank 15 mile off the Ajman beach on December 25, was fished out on Saturday morning.

IT IS seven minutes to six on April 30. Has it really only been 24 hours? A swirl of Saint Emilion is making an unholy mess of my whirling brain and churning my stomach as speedily as the propellers on this Aer Lingus flight EI0507 from Bordeaux to Dublin.

Income inequality is measured on the basis of the so-called Gini value. On this zero-to-100 scale, a lower value indicates a more equal distribution of income. The United States has had a Gini value of around 43 for the past ten years or more.

Economies in the Middle East and North Africa are coping with the aftermath ofthe Arab Spring uprisings and an unstable global environment. Many have boostedfiscal spending to sustain growth and head off popular discontent, putting thegovernment finances of some under pressure, although the budgets of most Gulfoil exporters are still...

A special tribunal has sentenced to death five Bangladeshi men for killing a Saudi diplomat in an apparent street crime earlier this year.

A car bomb attack on buses carrying Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims to Iran has killed 19 people and wounded 25.

Nation & World briefing SANAA, Yemen -- Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen has offered to pay tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who kills the U.

A Bahrain court has jailed two policemen for seven years after they tortured to death a Shi'ite detainee.

Bangladesh court sentences 5 to death for murder of Saudi diplomat in Dhaka

Baghdad summit:Attempts by the Workers’ Party to persuade the shortlived government of Charles Haughey in 1982 to become involved in the Non-Aligned Movement were resisted, newly released State papers reveal.

A special tribunal sentenced to death five Bangladeshi men for killing a Saudi diplomat in an apparent street crime earlier this year.  

The walls and shelves in Glenn and Barb Johnson's Dillon Valley home are adorned with artifacts from years of traveling and volunteering around the world.

A suicide bomber drove into a bus in south-west Pakistan today, killing 19 Shi'ite pilgrims and injuring 25. Eyewitnesses said the bomber's pick-up truck swerved in front of a bus carrying around 40 Shi'ite Muslims on their way to Iran before slamming on the brakes.

In his journey from conservative Republican to de facto Democrat, Chuck Hagel advocated several fundamental foreign policy positions while in the Senate that have not survived the test of history, an examination of his statements shows. Mr. Hagel, who retired from the Senate in 2008 and now is a leading ...

The new year will start with two economic crisis events in the United States but otherwise, we can expect 2013 to continue with the trends of the passing year.

It was a decades-long movement that freed 1.5 million Soviet Jews and helped bring down the Iron Curtain. It was marked by risks, helped by outsiders -- and then largely forgotten. Now new activists want the campaign to find its way into history books and be a model for...

A car bomb attack on buses carrying Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims to Iran has killed 19 people and wounded 25.

A car bomb targeting a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims has killed 19 people in south-west Pakistan.

An envoy warned the failure of the govt and the rebels to pursue a political solution could lead to the "full collapse of the Syrian state.

Numerous individual events from this week alone signify important trends in US government policy This week will likely entail light posting, but here are several items worthy of note: (1) I can't recall any one news article that so effectively conveys both the gross immorality and the strategic stupidity of...

A car bomb targeting a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims killed 19 people in southwest Pakistan on Sunday.

A car bomb killed at least 19 Shiite Muslim pilgrims in southwest Pakistan Sunday as security forces searched for the killers of 21 kidnapped troops in the troubled northwest, Agence France Presse reported quoting officials as saying.

Majid was born in 1937 in Iran. He came to the United States at the age of 17 when he was selected to serve as a delegate to the 1955 New York (International) Herald Tribune Forum and to meet President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Liquidity in Iran surpassed 4.15 trillion rials (over $338 billion) by the end of the seventh calendar month of Mehr (Oct. 21), compared with 402 billion rials ($328 billion) in its preceding month, the Mehr news agency cited reports by the Central bank of Iran. Liquidity has grown by...

Here are some amazing photos of Iran published by the National Geographic magazine in 2012. Among them is a breathtaking photo of lightning by the Caspian Sea in northern Iranian.

The Tehran Police force has announced that 88 "gold and foreign currency brokers" have been arrested, as disputes have intensified between the Iranian government and the Central Bank over handling the crisis in the currency and gold markets.

Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad was thrust into the spotlight when news emerged that secret mass executions were carried out there over the past two years. However, in this same institution a number of prisoners of conscience are serving sentences whose names have never appeared in the media. -Kyan Sabeti

>DUBAI Dec 30 (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates central bank has decided to limit mortgage loans for foreigners buying residential real estate in the country to 50 percent of the property's value, banking and real estate industry sources said on Sunday. The restriction is contained in a circular issued...

President Barack Obama said he saw nothing that would disqualify former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel from being nominated for US defense secretary. However, some Republicans have expressed doubts about Hagel's positions on Iran and Israel.

President Obama went on air to levy the pressure on Congress Sunday as Senate leaders worked to negotiate a deal to avert the tax hikes and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff." A surprising salute from Sen. Lindsey Graham may mean the president will get his way. read...

Sen. Tom Coburm (R-Okla.) would not vote to confirm former Nebraska Republican senator Chuck Hagel if President Obama nominates him to become secretary of defense, Coburn said on Sunday morning. Coburn said on CBS News's "Face The Nation," that Hagel lacks "the experience to manage a large orginization like...

India’s pet project to link south with central Asia got support from Russian president Vladimir Putin. During their talks in New Delhi last week, Singh and Putin agreed to unfreeze the north-south corridor through Iran within the next year.

AHWAZ, Dec. 30 (MNA) – Exercises of 20,000 members of the Ashoura and Al-Zahra Battalions in Khuzestan, one of the southern Iranian provinces, were launched with the objective of juvenile Basij members’ preparedness.

The following are my thoughts about things that might happen in 2013. This (Link) takes you to a discussion of my forecasts for 2012. I got a number of things right, and some important things wrong.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck was widely criticised on Sunday, even by his own centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), for saying German leaders were underpaid. Related Stories At least three al Qaeda-linked militants killed in Yemen - sources Pakistan blast kills 20 Shia pilgrims in latest sectarian attack U.

Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar's report secures the release of 29 Indian fishermen from an Iranian prison.

The plane is stuck near the city of Ahvaz after suffering technical problems, according to the country’s director of airports. "After landing, the crew traveled on to countries around the Persian Gulf and the plane is currently being repaired," Mahmoud Rasoulinejad told the news agency.