Purveyor
Purveyor's Journal'Doomsday' Ticks Closer On Nuclear, Climate Fears
AFP - Global uncertainty on how to deal with the threats of nuclear weapons and climate change have forced the "Doomsday clock" one minute closer to midnight, leading international scientists said Tuesday.
"It is now five minutes to midnight," said Allison Macfarlan, chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday clock in 1947 as a barometer of how close the world is to an apocalyptic end.
The last decision by the group, which includes a host of Nobel Prize winning scientists, in 2010 moved the clock a minute further away from midnight on hopes of global nuclear cooperation and the election of President Barack Obama.
However, Tuesday's decision pushes the clock back to the time where it was in 2007.
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http://www.france24.com/en/20120110-doomsday-ticks-closer-nuclear-climate-fears-0
Russia Space Chief Says Some Of Nation’s Satellites May Have Been Sabotaged
By Associated Press,
MOSCOW — Some recent failures of Russian satellites may have been the result of sabotage by foreign forces, Russia’s space chief said in comments apparently aimed at the United States.
Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin stopped short of accusing any specific country of disabling Russian satellites, but in an interview Tuesday in the daily Izvestia he said some Russian craft had suffered “unexplained” malfunctions while flying over another side of the globe beyond the reach of his nation’s tracking facilities.
Popovkin spoke when asked about the failure of the $170-million unmanned Phobos-Ground probe, which was to explore one of Mars’ two moons, Phobos, but became stranded while orbiting Earth after its Nov. 9 launch. Engineers in Russia and the European Space Agency have failed to propel the spacecraft toward Mars, and it is expected to fall back to Earth around Jan. 15.
Roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov refused to elaborate on Popovkin’s comments, which marked the first time a senior Russian government official has claimed that foreign sabotage has been used to disable one of the country’s satellites.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-space-chief-says-countrys-spacecraft-may-have-suffered-from-hostile-interference/2012/01/10/gIQATfr2nP_story.html
Israeli Watchdog: West Bank Settlement Building Jumped 20 Percent In 2011
By Associated Press,
JERUSALEM — An Israeli monitoring group says Israel stepped up settlement building in the West Bank last year — a sticking point in the deadlock in peace talks with the Palestinians.
The dovish group Peace Now says Israel began construction of 1,850 homes in West Bank settlements in 2011, about 20 percent higher than the previous year.
The 2010 figures were depressed by a 10-month new construction freeze aimed at encouraging negotiations. Peace Now says that once the freeze expired in late 2010, Israel quickly resumed construction.
Israel’s government has not yet released its 2011 numbers. Government spokesman Mark Regev says Israel is showing more “restraint” than ever before.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-president-calls-jordan-talks-with-israel-important-opportunity/2012/01/10/gIQAJ4P3nP_story.html
Shiite Pilgrims Killed In New Attacks Across Iraq
AFP - Attacks across Iraq on Monday, many of which targeted Shiites, killed 11 people and wounded dozens, including 15 Afghans visiting the country for religious commemorations, officials said.
The violence included bombings in and around Baghdad against Shiite worshippers walking to the shrine city of Karbala, 110 kilometres (70 miles) south of the capital, for Arbaeen rituals later this week.
In the deadliest attack, a car bomb blast killed four people and wounded at least 25 near Husseiniyah Shiite mosque in Muasalat, southwest Baghdad, at about 6:30 pm (1530 GMT), said officials from the ministries of interior and defence.
About half an hour later, another car bomb explosion killed one person and wounded at least five others in Shaab, a Shiite neighbourhood in the east of the capital, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
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http://www.france24.com/en/20120109-attacks-across-iraq-target-shiite-pilgrims-husseiniyah-arbaeen-baghdad-karbala
Former US President Carter 'Pleased' With Egypt Polls
AFP - Former US president Jimmy Carter gave the thumbs up on Tuesday to Egypt's parliamentary elections, saying the people's will was "expressed accurately."
"We have been very pleased," Carter told reporters during a tour of a polling station at the Rod al-Farag girls' secondary school in a working class district of the Egyptian capital
He said the election -- a three-staged process launched in November to choose the first parliament since mass protests forced former president Hosni Mubarak to quit -- had been peaceful despite "some problems."
"But in general the will of the people has been expressed accurately," he said on the eve of the end of the polls.
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http://www.france24.com/en/20120110-carter-pleased-with-egypt-polls
Top Senator: An Attack On Israel Is An Attack On US
By HERB KEINON
01/10/2012 01:29
An Iranian attack on Israel would be tantamount to attacking the United States, US Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) told an auditorium full of high school students in Jerusalem on Monday.
Inouye, introduced to the students by former AIPAC president Robert Asher as the best friend Israel has in Congress, said he discussed the Iranian threat in a meeting earlier in the day with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
“We in the US are deeply concerned with the activities in Iran,” said Inouye, who is America’s senior senator, having served continuously since 1963. “If the Iranians should ever develop a nuclear device or bomb, that could mean the end of the world as we know it in the Middle East. It would have an impact on all countries, not just Israel. As a result, our position is that if you attack Israel, you are attacking the United States.”
Inouye is the president pro tempore of the US Senate, making him third in line to succeed the US president, following the vice president and speaker of the house. He is also chairman of the powerful senate appropriations committee, and is here leading a delegation from that committee that also includes Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).
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http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=252905
Obama Ready to Strike to Stop Iran: Ex-Adviser (Dennis Ross)
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan - Tue Jan 10 11:41:13 GMT 2012
No one should doubt that President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the president’s former special assistant on Iran said.
Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear- armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, said in an interview yesterday.
“There are consequences if you act militarily, and there’s big consequences if you don’t act,” said Ross, who in a two- hour interview at the Bloomberg Washington office laid out a detailed argument against those who say Obama would sooner “contain” a nuclear-armed Iran than strike militarily.
The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Ross, who last month rejoined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/obama-prepared-to-use-force-to-stop-nuclear-iran-former-adviser-ross-says.html
Oly's Ordeal: Corgi Survives 4 Days After Owner Dies In Avalanche
By BRETT FRENCH Of The Gazette Staff | Posted: Thursday, January 5, 2012
Assumed to have died in an avalanche that killed one of his owners on Saturday, an exhausted and hungry Welsh Corgi dog lay down Wednesday by the door of the Cooke City hotel room that the family had occupied four days earlier.
“The family is super excited,” said Mark Staples, of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, which investigated the incident. “It’s one bright spot for them.”
Robert Weinstein, owner of the Alpine Motel at Cooke City, spotted the dog around noon Wednesday.
“I just saw it outside sitting by the room, which is pretty amazing,” he said.
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http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/oly-s-ordeal-corgi-survives-days-after-owner-dies-in/article_4e52f6ba-8bd7-5148-acd1-575e43bb9868.html
Iranian, Venezuelan Leaders Rebuff U.S., Joke About Bomb
By Andrew Cawthorne and Brian Ellsworth
CARACAS | Mon Jan 9, 2012 6:56pm EST
(Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez lavished each other with praise on Monday, mocked U.S. disapproval and joked about having an atomic bomb at their disposal.
"Despite those arrogant people who do not wish us to be together, we will unite forever," the Iranian president told Venezuela's socialist leader Chavez at the start of a visit to four left-leaning Latin American nations.
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Ahmadinejad was in Venezuela at the start of a tour intended to shore up support as expanded Western economic sanctions kick in over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
"The imperialist madness has been unleashed in a way that has not been seen for a long time," Chavez said in a ceremony to welcome Ahmadinejad at his presidential palace in Caracas.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/09/us-venezuela-iran-idUSTRE80826J20120109
Iran Reports Arrests Of U.S. Spies
MOSCOW, January 9 (RIA Novosti)
Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi has announced the arrest of several alleged U.S. spies charged with an attempt to disrupt the upcoming parliamentary elections, the official IRNA news agency reported.
“The detainees were in contact with abroad through cyberspace networks,” IRNA quoted Moslehi as saying on Sunday.
“We arrested them after we obtained full information about their espionage activities,” Moslehi said without giving any further details.
The announcement comes as Tehran's tensions with the West continue to escalate after Western powers threatened new sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its controversial nuclear program.
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http://en.rian.ru/world/20120109/170675357.html
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