Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Russia has no plan to reconsider relations with Iran
MOSCOW, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Moscow has no plan to reconsider its stance on Iran in order to please the U.S. and NATO, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Tuesday.
He told local military reporters that Russia doesn't agree that Iran is its enemy.
"Iran is our neighbor and partner," he was quoted by the state- run Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
He said the security of Russia's southern frontiers would largely depend on Iran's policy in the Caucasus.
He gave a negative answer to a question from a reporter about whether Russia might sell S-300 missile systems to Iran if the U.S. and NATO fails to resolve the disputes with Moscow over the planned missile defense system.
"Cooperation with Iran in the field of defense technologies is prohibited by a UN Security Council resolution today and we can't violate it," he said, adding that this issue has nothing to do with Russia's missile shield talks with NATO.
In September 2010, Russia banned the delivery of S-300 to Iran under the UN resolution, though the contract was signed with Teheran several years ago. Moscow said it would pay a refund of over 166 million U.S. dollars back to Iran.
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Sarkozy wants G20 to control food prices
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday he wants the world's group of 20 rich industrial nations and major emerging markets to set up a shared central database of food prices to help control market volatility and keep commodity speculators in check.
Access to food in many areas will likely become more precarious over the next decades, and the markets will have to be more tightly regulated to avoid massive shortages, Sarkozy told an international conference on commodities and raw materials.
"Speculation, panic and lack of transparency have seen prices soaring," he asked. "Is that the world we want? France is saying quite clearly it is not."
Sarkozy currently holds the presidency of the G-20 group, with which he wants to push through a plan for more transparency in agriculture commodity market networks. He said it would go a long way toward taming the extreme food price volatility of past years. The G-20 takes up the issue of food prices at a meeting of farm ministers next week.
He said a comparison of farm market prices over the last five years compared with the 15-year period of 1990-2005 shows that price volatility for cereals has doubled, tripled for sugar and is now 4 times as high for rice, "the basic staple for a quarter of humanity."
"Is this right, is this acceptable? can we put up with this for longer?," Sarkozy asked.
Sarkozy insisted something had to be done about the many hedge funds and specialized financial institutions that have joined the traditional trading houses on the market floor, driving up prices.
"It is time for the G-20 to take its responsibility," he told the conference. He said it was the same lack of regulation now visible in the commodities and raw materials markets that drove the financial markets "to the edge of the abyss" during the 2008 global financial crisis.
"Will we have the same disaster in the world of commodities and raw materials? It is a pretty simple question. We have got to tackle it - now. And not put it off," he said.
To improve transparency and oversight in market movements, Sarkozy wants a centralized register for data transactions in derivatives. He wants trading data to be better available to boost food security and stable markets by cutting out the uncertainties of excessive speculation.
He said the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations could collect and hold all the data, including those on private stocks.
Rising food prices were also blamed by the FAO in a Tuesday report on food shortages in the Horn of Africa, where over 8 million are in need of emergency aid.
"Very high food and fuel prices are adding to the difficulties of poor households in accessing food across the region," the FAO said in a statement.
AP
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US satellite images capture new buildings at North Korea nuclear plant
The discovery of the new buildings has sparked concern that they may be part of a drive by Pyongyang to fabricate fuel for nuclear reactors or to enrich uranium.
Renovation of some of the buildings at the sprawling plant have also been identified in new satellite images released by the Institute for Science and International Security.
The organisation, based in Washington, DC, identifiec a number of entirely new buildings, including some that were apparently only completed this spring.
The release of the report coincides with a report to parliament by South Korea’s defence minister, Kim Kwan-Jin, that the North may have developed a nuclear warhead small enough to be loaded onto a ballistic missile and warning that the risk of another “surprise provocation” from Pyongyang is now rising.
The South has claimed that its assessment of the nuclear capabilities of its belligerent neighbour is not based on specific intelligence, but its analysts will have been carefully watching developments at Yongbyon.
Construction of the new facilities apparently started after Pyongyang expelled teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency in April 2009 that had been charged with disabling three plutonium production facilities at the site.
North Korea later confirmed that it had begun construction of a gas centrifuge plant at the fuel fabrication facility, an enlarged site around 2 miles south of the 5-megawatt experimental reactor that first reached criticality as far back as August 1985.
Reprocessed plutonium from the reactor is believed to have been used in nuclear tests North Korea carried out in 2006 and 2009.
ISIS analysts have also confirmed that extensive work has been carried out at an earlier fuel fabrication plant, which has been enlarged and given a new roof.
The location of additional new buildings close to the gas centrifuge facility also indicate they are being used for the fabrication of reactor fuel, for enriching uranium or its conversion into uranium hexaflouride, a compound used in the enrichment process to produce fuel for nuclear weapons.
The Telegraph
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Auditor Disputes Report About $6.6 Billion in Iraq Money Being Stolen
The U.S. watchdog on Iraq reconstruction is disputing a report quoting him suggesting that $6.6 billion in Iraqi oil money entrusted to U.S. hands may have been stolen.
The charge, if true, would make the theft of funds the largest in U.S. history, and has already angered Iraqis reportedly debating whether to sue over the missing funds.
The Pentagon refuses to endorse the charge that the disappearing dollars were stolen -- either by greedy U.S. contractors or others involved in its movement from U.S. holdings to Iraq. And now, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen said he never said that $6.6 billion in missing money was swiped.
"What we concluded in our previous audits is that it's been virtually impossible to account for what happened to that money," Bowen told Fox News in a telephone interview Monday, adding that criminal cases have led to the convictions of people who have stolen money from a special fund set up by the U.N. Security Council.
But Bowen said he did not mean to imply anything more when he answered a Los Angeles Times reporter's question about whether it would be serious if billions of dollars was stolen from the Development Fund for Iraq.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/14/auditor-disputes-report-about-66-billion-in-iraq-money-being-stolen/#ixzz1PMDWVxDb
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N.Korea 'Exported Massive Amounts of Missiles'
A total of 420 cases of ballistic missiles export were reported between 1987 and 1993, 30 cases between 1994 and 2000, and 60 from 2001 to 2009. Pollack said North Korea exported missiles to Syria, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
He said North Korea is an important source of the missile trade, because it acquires technology from various sources, develops its own missiles, and exports them to other nations. He called it the most important supplier of ballistic missiles for Iran and Syria. The North is also suspected of selling missiles to Burma.
A South Korean government official said, "We believe that North Korea has earned a huge amount of money from exporting missiles, with scud missiles costing at least US$1 million each."
Chosun
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http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/06/15/2011061500396.html
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It's official: US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
It's official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression.
Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data.
The unemployment remains at a still-elevated 9.1???? percent, throwing into question whether the recovery is real.
"The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression," Paul Dales.
According to Case-Shiller, prices dropped 1.9 percent in the first quarter, a move that the firm interpreted as a clear double dip in prices.
Moreover, Dales said prices likely have not completed their downturn.
"Nonetheless, prices are likely to fall by a further 3 percent this year, resulting in a 5 percent drop over the year as a whole."
Prices continue to tumble despite affordability, which by most conventional metrics is near historic highs.
Moreover, Dales said prices likely have not completed their downturn.
"Nonetheless, prices are likely to fall by a further 3 percent this year, resulting in a 5 percent drop over the year as a whole."
Prices continue to tumble despite affordability, which by most conventional metrics is near historic highs.
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