Russia's NATO Envoy Warns of Libya War

President Dmitry Medvedev has urged U.S. President Barack Obama to help prevent civilian deaths in Libya, even as Russia's NATO envoy warned that the U.S.-led military alliance could be dragged into a full-scale war.

NATO has control of an arms embargo on Libya and agreed last week to assume command of a no-fly zone over its territory, but Washington has been left in control of conducting airstrikes against Libyan leaderMoammar Gadhafi's ground forces.

The United States hopes to hand over control of the airstrikes as soon as possible and said over the weekend that it expected NATO to take command of it soon.

Russian Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin said Saturday that NATO risked being caught in a war in Libya like those being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Just as we forecast, NATO is being drawn deeper and deeper into war in North Africa," Rogozin told Interfax.

"The statements we are hearing today from NATO members and the alliance on the whole could draw this bloc into a full-scale operation on Libyan territory, which means essentially the U.S. and its closest allies could be drawn into a third war in addition to those in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

Russia backed United Nations sanctions against Gadhafi and his government earlier this month but abstained in a Security Council vote that authorized a no-fly zone, allowing armed intervention by a Western coalition.

In a phone call with Obama, Medvedev said the deaths of Libyan civilians during Western military intervention must be prevented, the Kremlin said in a statement.

"The president especially noted the necessity of preventing victims among the civilian population," the statement said late last week.

In Washington, the Obama administration said Obama had expressed his appreciation for Russia's support for the UN sanctions and positive statements Medvedev has made about the resolution's mandate.

Gadhafi has accused Western forces of killing dozens of civilians, but his officials have not shown reporters in Tripoli any evidence of such killings. U.S. officials say they have no evidence Western bombs have killed any civilians.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has taken a harder stance than Medvedev, comparing the UN resolution to "medieval calls for crusades." He also said those responsible for civilian deaths in Libya should "pray for the salvation of their souls."

Rights group Memorial responded late last week that Putin should pray for his soul for inflicting a Libya-style bombing on Chechnya a decade ago.

"Putin has visibly completely forgotten about what took place in his own country and about his own implication in those tragic events," Memorial said in a statement. "Maybe the prime minister himself should pray first of all for the salvation of his own soul?"

Putin rose to popularity when he led an invasion of Chechnya in 1999 on the eve of his presidency, starting the second Chechen war.

Meanwhile, Medvedev expressed concern over tensions in North Africa and the Middle East at a meeting Friday with visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, the Kremlin said.

The Saudi foreign minister carried a message from King Abdullah, stressing the need to maintain close coordination of policies between Russia and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East and North Africa in the face of recent events.

"The Russian side expressed concern over the sharp jump in tensions in the region," said a statement on the Kremlin web site.

Saudi Arabia has seen unrest rise, especially among its Shiite population as protests have rocked the Arab world in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain this year.

The Moscow Times


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Scientists unveil 'world's first practical artificial leaf'

Daniel 12:4 (King James Version)

 ⁴But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

Leaves – the kind that grow on trees – create energy from sunlight and water through the process of photosynthesis. For over a decade, scientists have been kicking around the idea of creating an "artificial leaf." Such a device would use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which could then be stored in a fuel cell and used to create electricity. A functioning artificial leaf has been created before, but was impractical due to the fact that it was made from expensive materials, and was highly unstable. Now, however, scientists are reporting that they have created a cost-effective, stable artificial leaf.

"A practical artificial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of science for decades," said MIT's Dr. Daniel Nocera, who led the research team. "We believe we have done it. The artificial leaf shows particular promise as an inexpensive source of electricity for homes of the poor in developing countries. Our goal is to make each home its own power station."

Nocera's leaf is about the size of a poker card (but thinner), and is made of silicon, electronics, and nickel and cobalt catalysts – all materials that are relatively inexpensive and widely-available. Placed in a gallon of water in bright sunlight, it is said to be able to produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country for a day. It would be connected to a fuel cell located either on top of or beside the house.

When tested under laboratory conditions, it was able to operate continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity. Newly discovered nickel and cobalt catalysts are the key to the leaf's practicality, allowing it to reportedly operate at ten times the efficiency of a natural leaf. Nocera believes that the efficiency can be boosted much higher in future versions and has founded a company called Sun Catalytix to pursue development of the technology.

John Turner of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory created a functioning artificial leaf over ten years ago, but it incorporated costly metals, and barely lasted one day. More recently, Chinese scientists have presented a designfor an artificial leaf that incorporated titanium dioxide and platinum, and Dutch researchers created a light-capturing system based on the chlorophyll of the alga Spirulina.

The MIT research was presented today at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California.

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Crisis-hit Portugal encouraged to accept eurozone’s bail-out package

The Portuguese government has come under renewed pressure to accept a European bail-out at the start of another crucial week for the eurozone

Ewald Nowotny, a governing council member of the European Central Bank, said Portugal should seek help from Europe after the resignation of the prime minister over austerity measures .

He told reporters: “From a purely economic point of view one could probably recommend it. The domestic political situation in Portugal has clearly worsened ... the head of the government has stepped down.”

Jose Socrates was re-elected leader of Portugal's Socialist party on Sunday, four days after resigning as prime minister, and vowed to run in a parliamentary election on a platform opposing a financial bail-out.

Mr Socrates, who won 93pc of the leadership votes despite the country's political crisis, spared no criticism of the opposition whose rejection of his minority government's austerity measures last week led to his resignation.

"I am here to face the judgment of the Portuguese. I am not afraid and I will fight for victory," he told a party meeting after being re-elected as general secretary.

The Telegraph


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Israeli and Saudi leaders in Moscow as Palestinians ramp up missile strikes

As Russian, Israeli and Saudi leaders discussed the ramifications of the Arab uprising in Moscow and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates talked to Israeli military chiefs in Tel Aviv, the Palestinian Hamas continued to escalate its missile offensive on Israeli cities. Thursday, March 24, heavy Grad missiles hit the towns of Ashdod and Ofakim making it the worst day of a bad week, with schools in the southern half of Israel shutting down one by one and bomb shelters being opened.
In Moscow, DEBKAfile's exclusive sources report that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was working to set up a discreet meeting between two visitors – Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, failing which he will try and bring the Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, who arrived with the foreign minister, together with the Israeli leader.
Muqrin has met Israeli leaders in secret before, including the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
According to our sources, the prospect of this landmark meeting was Netanyahu's pretext for rebuffing the rising domestic clamor to let the IDF give the Palestinian Hamas its deserts for the war it has unleashed against the Israeli civilian population.
The very defense and military officials who keep on telling the public, against all the evidence, that Hamas realy wants calm restored, have given a quite different picture to the prime minister and defense chiefs. The radical Palestinian rulers of Gaza are in fact raising the stakes, they say, and hoping to goad Israel into an extreme response in the belief that a war clash with Israel will elevate the Gaza Strip to the same regional level as the war in Libya and the Arab uprisings, especially in Yemen and Bahrain.

They also believe it will help Syrian president Bashar Assad, who hosts a Hamas center in Damascus, by distracting attention from the bloodbath he is inflicting on protesters against his repressive regime.

Thursday, Syrian soldiers were reported to have shot 100 protesters dead in the southern town of Deraa. At some point, the West which is punishing Muammar Qaddafi for killing his own people might also take notice of Assad's actions against his.

Netanyahu's military chiefs have explained to him that abstention from a military operation against Hamas could be interpreted by the Syrian ruler as an Israeli signal of willingness to go an extra mile for the sake of peace talks.
DEBKAfile's Jerusalem and Moscow sources note that this is the point at which Israel's declining security situation becomes relevant to a possible Israeli-Saudi dialogue.

Neither Jerusalem nor Riyadh is at ease with the US role in favor of the popular uprisings against veteran Arab regimes – and most particularly the US-UK-French military intervention in Libya. Both find this policy detrimental to the national and security interests of America's foremost Middle East allies.

They also share resentment for the benefits accrued from this wave of unrest by Tehran and the effect it has had to turn world attention away from its progress toward manufacturing a nuclear bomb.
The Saudi king and Israeli prime minster are apprehensive, on the strength of their intelligence input, that Iran will eventually seize control of the popular uprisings in Arab lands, especially Egypt.

Riyadh alone took a substantial precautionary step against this menace by sending military units into the Bahrain on Feb. 14 to pre-empt the Iranian-backed Shiite threat to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and the tiny kingdom's financial and oil assets at the back door of the rich eastern Saudi oil center.

Israel's leaders in contrast have never struck any position or policy with regard to the turbulence around its borders, ignoring the perils they pose to its security.

Netanyahu's trip to Moscow, which opposes the US-British-French operation in Libya, is his first attempt to explore a diplomatic option outside Israel's alliance with the United States. The Russians, the Saudis and the Israelis too see advantages in discussing such options and testing new paths of cooperation to renew the direct exchanges Riyadh and Jerusalem maintained in the past through back channels on the Iranian issue.
It is therefore not surprising to find US Defense Secretary Robert Gates arriving in Israel Thursday. He flew in from Cairo after talks with Egyptian military leaders about possible military participation in the coalition campaign against Muammar Qaddafi. In his talks with Israeli defense and military chiefs, Gates will no doubt stress the importance to Israel's security of the strong ties between Jerusalem and Washington. 


DEBKAfiles

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REVEALED — The left´s Economic Terrorism Playbook: The Chase Campaign by a coalition of unions, Community Groups, Lawmakers and students to Take Down US Capitalism

THE BLAZE

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The inflation in the US Is Running Up To 8 per cent

Marc Faber : “The annual cost of living increases are more than 5% today and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is continuously lying about the inflation rate, including Mr. Bernanke. He’s a liar. Inflation is much higher than what they publish.I think that inflation is between 5% and 8% per annum in the US, and in Western Europe, a little bit lower, also 4-5% per annum.”..Marc Faber estimates that inflation in the US was currently Is Running Up To 8 per cent , and between 4 and 5 per cent in Europe. Marc Faber believes that Pakistan may be the next to fall into chaos after Tunisia and Egypt :
"You may not have a problem in Saudi Arabia and in the Emirates, in Kuwait and Qatar, because there the governments can heavily subsidize food if they want to. But I am worried that what has happened in Egypt will happen in Pakistan... I think Egypt is a reminder to people that politics, and social events, and geopolitics have a meaningful effect on asset markets. The developed markets have way outperformed, and now I think that it may be a wake up call that the US outperforms emerging economies for a while."
in CNBC

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Extreme radiation detected at No.2 reactor

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has detected radioactive materials 10-million-times normal levels in water at the No.2 reactor complex of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The plant operator, known as TEPCO, says it measured 2.9-billion becquerels of radiation per one cubic centimeter of water from the basement of the turbine building attached to the Number 2 reactor.

The level of contamination is about 1,000 times that of the leaked water already found in the basements of the Number 1 and 3 reactor turbine buildings.

The company says the latest reading is 10-million times the usual radioactivity of water circulating within a normally operating reactor.
TEPCO says the radioactive materials include 2.9-billion becquerels of iodine-134, 13-million becquerels of iodine-131, and 2.3-million becquerels each for cesium 134 and 137.

These substances are emitted during nuclear fission inside a reactor core.

The company says the extremely contaminated water may stem from damaged fuel in the reactor, and are trying to determine how the leakage occurred.

University of Tokyo graduate school professor Naoto Sekimura says the leak may come from the suppression chamber of the Number 2 reactor, which is known to be damaged. The chamber is designed to contain overflows of radioactive substances from the reactor.

Sunday, March 27, 2011 13:44 +0900 (JST)


NHK


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http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_12.html

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