VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is pressing ahead with the construction of a research reactor that Western experts say could offer it a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb if it decides to make one, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday.
Iran has transported the reactor vessel to the heavy water plant near the central town of Arak but has not yet installed it, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report issued to member states.
Western concerns about Iran are focused largely on uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, as such material refined to a high level can provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
"Once the reactor operates, it could spawn more than enough weapons-grade plutonium for a bomb per year, should Iran ever decide to do that," said nuclear expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank.
The Islamic Republic, which denies it has any intention of acquiring nuclear arms, plans to commission the plant in the first quarter of 2014, the IAEA said.
Tehran last year postponed the planned start-up from the third quarter of 2013, a target that Western experts said always had seemed unrealistic.
As reported by Reuters on Tuesday, the IAEA report showed Iran increasing its capacity to refine uranium by installing hundreds more centrifuges at Natanz, underlining Tehran's defiance of Western demands to curb the activity.
But, in a development that could help buy time for diplomacy between Iran and world powers, the report showed limited growth of Iran's most sensitive nuclear stockpile and it remained below an Israeli "red line" for possible action.
Tehran's holding of medium-enriched uranium gas is closely watched as Israel says it must not amass enough for one bomb if further processed and has threatened air strikes if diplomacy and sanctions do not stop Iran's atomic drive.
Critics say Iran is trying to achieve the capability to make atomic arms. Iran denies this, saying it needs nuclear technology for energy generation and medical purposes and that it is Israel's reputed nuclear arsenal that threatens peace in the Middle East.
Yahoo News
At 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, the Turrialba Volcano, located east of the province of Cartago, began to spew gas and ash from two crater openings, the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (Ovsicori) reported.
By 8:30 a.m. a significant amount of volcanic material was released from the two openings of volcano, "which may indicate that these materials come from deep areas,” Ovsicori said.
"It is uncertain what will happen. Volcanologists are heading to the site to evaluate the activity," the statement said.
Experts said Tuesday's activity is “normal for an active volcano such as Turrialba,” but they recommended all nearby communities remain vigilant in coming hours.
The released material fell into grasslands and communities in the canton of Turrialba and reached some three kilometers west of the crater.
The trail of gases and ash can be seen from various locations in the provinces of Cartago, San José, Heredia and Limón. Public access to the volcano area was closed last year due to the activity.
The Turrialba Volcano also emitted material in 2007, 2010 and 2012. The last eruptions of the volcano were in 1884.
Tico News
A perfect storm of yen strength, a spike in Japanese government bond yields and new evidence of weakness in China's economy were behind a major sell-off Thursday in Japan's equity markets, said experts.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 closed down 7.3 percent in a session that saw it rise 2 percent in early trade only to reverse direction and fall sharply. The broader Topix finished 6.8 percent lower.
"Almost everything went wrong during the day - the bond market had a bit of a crash, China PMI data, and the yen is stronger. The market is really overheated, all it's looking for is a trigger," Nicholas Smith, Japan strategist at CLSA told CNBC.
Following the sell-off in U.S. Treasurys overnight, Japan government bond (JGB) prices dived, forcing the yield on the 10-year JGB to 1 percent earlier in the day - the highest level in a year - spooking investors.
NBC
IAF Commander, Major General Amir Eshel, spoke Wednesday about the IAF's preparedness for a surprise war scenario with Syria, and said that the S-300 anti-aircraft system is on its way to Syria.
"A surprise war can come about through many scenarios at present," he said at a conference of the Fisher Institute for National Security in Herzliya. Isolated incidents can escalate very quickly, he explained, and added that "we are committed to being ready in a matter of hours and to operate up to the end of the spectrum."
"The Assad regime has invested a lot in order to attain the best aerial defense capabilities that it could buy," he said. "We are talking about weapons from a completely different generation, nothing like what was there before."
"From the little money he has," Maj. Gen. Eshel explained, "Assad has invested billions in buying the best weapons systems Russia can offer, including the S-300, which is en route to Syria. And he is not the only one; everybody is busy acquiring such capabilities."
"In order to unleash the IAF's intense firepower, aerial supremacy must be attained," he said.
"Should Syria collapse tomorrow, we may find ourselves ver quickly with this huge weapons arsenal scatterring and facing Israel. If, in the Second Lebanon War, we used only part of our abilities, in the next war we will have to give 100 percent, so that the operation will be fast and very powerful."
Israel National News
With Greece suffering the biggest economic depression in decades, all so a few rich men can preserve their wealth and not have their EUR-denominated savings wiped out (even if the alternative means finally being able to rebalance externally using the Drachma instead of forcing internal rebalancing via unemployment and plunging wages), it was only a matter of time before we found out just how humiliating the conversion of the entire economy to a "gray", non-tax paying one would be for the citizens of Greece.
As the NYT reports, in just the past two years, the numbers of Greeks engaging in prostitution as a last course source of income has more than doubled: according to the National Center for Social Research, the number of people selling sex has surged 150 percent in the last two years.
Furthermore, with every business in which there is exploding "competition" and rich client scarcity, it is not just any prostitution, but very deflationary prostitution:
“Five euros only, just 5 euros,” whispered Maria, a young prostitute with sunken cheeks and bedraggled hair, as she pitched herself forward from the shadows of a graffiti-riddled alley in central Athens on a recent weeknight.
Many prostitutes have been selling their services for as little as 10 to 15 euros, a price that has shrunk along with the income of clients afflicted by the crisis. Many more prostitutes are taking greater health risks by having unprotected sex, which sells for a premium. Still more are subject to violence and rape.
Now a new menace has arisen: a type of crystal methamphetamine called shisha, after the Turkish water pipe, but otherwise known as poor man’s cocaine, brewed from barbiturates and other ingredients including alcohol, chlorine and even battery acid.
And with a surge in prostitution come the drugs, and the danger of an epidemic of blood-transmitted diseases, like HIV:
A hit of shisha, concocted in makeshift laboratories around Athens, costs 3 to 4 euros. Doses come in the form of a 0.01-gram ball, leaving many users reaching for hits throughout the day. They include prostitutes, whom Mr. Tzortzinis photographed in a seedy central neighborhood of Athens called Omonia, next to a large police station.
But while the Greek still soaring unemployment rate is no surprise to anyone, it is the youth unemployment that is the problem. And as the Telegraph reports, in some areas of Greece, youth unemployment has now hit a inconceivable 75%.
Western Macedonia in Greece had the highest level of youth unemployment in the European Union, with the number of 16 to 24 year-olds out of work jumping to 72.5pc in 2012 from 52.8pc in 2011, according to Eurostat. Total youth unemployment in Greece stood at 55.3pc last year, more than double the EU average of 22.9pc.
The region, located in northern Greece, has been hit hard by the economic crisis, with total unemployment rising from 12.1pc in 2007 to almost 30pc in 2012 due to de-industrialisation and the migration of labour intensive industries to neighbouring countries, where wage demands are lower.
According to a report by the European Commission in December, more than a fifth of firms stopped trading in the region between 2008 and 2011.
Europe's response to this pandemic of unemployment?
Europe's leaders have called for more action to tackle joblessness in Europe. Earlier this month, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso urged Europe's leaders to come up with "a more ambitious plan to fight youth unemployment" at a next month's EU summit.
"We must give revive hope, specially for young people," he said. "We cannot wait for long, we are all aware this is urgent."
And when hope is not enough, and when these same young people end up as prostitutes, drug addicts or, worst, infected with HIV, maybe they should also hope that a cure for the disease is somehow discovered (and which they can afford).
Why? Just so the 0.001% uberwealthy can continue to get richer and richer courtesy of a year after year of flawed monetary and fiscal policy, even as the real world around them burns.
Zero Hedge
