Purveyor
Purveyor's JournalCars, Home Improvement Give April Retail Sales A Boost
May 13, 2013, 7:57 a.m.
Spring’s arrival late in April gave retail sales a light boost as Americans emerged from hibernation to spend on cars, gardening goods and building supplies.
From March to April, sales rose a slight 0.1% after declining a revised 0.5% from February to March, according to the Commerce Department. Wall Street had expected a 0.3% slide.
The dissipation of the bitter weather that had kept many consumers cooped up at home, coupled with higher home prices, the better-than-expected job market and the record stock performance, helped the sales figures jump 3.7% compared with April 2012.
Consumer spending is a key measure of the nation’s economic health, as it is estimated to make up the majority of domestic economic activity.
Car dealers and other motor vehicle and parts sellers said monthly sales ticked up 1% in April and surged 7.7% from the year-earlier period after slumping 0.6% in what analysts at Credit Suisse called a “sluggish March.”
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http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-april-retail-sales-20130513,0,3299874.story
Middle East Peace Process Dealt A Blow As Israel Gives Go-Ahead For 300 New Homes In West Bank
Hope earlier in the week that a decision to freeze the construction of new Israeli settler homes in the occupied West Bank could renew the moribund peace process were dealt a blow earlier today when it transpired that permission had been granted to build nearly 300 new houses close to the Palestinian administrative capital, Ramallah.
The announcement will disappoint Americans – especially the Secretary of State, John Kerry - who have spent two months attempting to broker a new deal between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships.
The Palestinians maintain a long held position that new talks are only possible with a new moratorium of settlement building. The Americans and Israelis say new talks should go ahead without pre-conditions. Settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Israel’s civil administration yesterday approved a plan to build 296 new houses in the settlement of Beit El. The scheme – which is the first settlement plan to be approved by Israel’s new government since it was sworn in in March - has already won approval from the Defence Minister, Moshe Ya’alon.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/middle-east-peace-process-dealt-a-blow-as-israel-gives-goahead-for-300-new-homes-in-west-bank-8609426.html
Settlers Uproot Dozens Of Olive Trees In Hebron Village
Residents of Maon settlement uprooted around 70 trees in al-Tawani village, east of Yatta, said Rateb al-Jbour, the Hebron popular committee coordinator.
The trees belonged to Khader al-Amour and Kayed al-Amour, al-Jbour told Ma'an. He said settlers were trying to confiscate more Palestinian land in the area to expand the illegal settlement.
Al-Tawani mayor Mohammad Rabei condemned the incident and settlers' continuous attacks on villagers. He said settlers were trying to force Palestinians to leave the village.
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said "police received a report about the damaging of some 62 Palestinian-owned olive trees" in the area.
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=594193
Churches Denounce Israel Violence Against Christians
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) – Patriarchs and heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem on Sunday released a joint statement denouncing attacks by Israeli police officers on worshipers and pilgrims during Holy Saturday at the Church of Holy Sepulcher.
Signatories of the statement highlighted that they saw “awful scenes of the brutal treatment to clerics, average people and pilgrims in Jerusalem during Holy Saturday.”
They added: “A day of joy was turned into a day of severe sadness and pain for several of our faithful brothers who were mistreated by a number of Israeli police officers at the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”
It is unacceptable, according to the statement, that clergymen and average people “get beaten brutally and indiscriminately and be denied access to their churches under the pretext of keeping order.”
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=594717
Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Facilities would leave the Entire Gulf States Region Virtually Uninhabitable
Every Spring and Summer, during a period of low pressure over the Persian Gulf, powerful winds known as the “shamals and sharqi,” sweep down from the north and north east into Saudi Arabia, whipping up ever more grains of sand as they head south and south west across the Arabian Desert. Frequently, these sandstorms become gargantuan in size – hundreds of meters high and kilometers wide and in length of dense roiling particulate, choking the lungs of those exposed, blocking out the sun completely and, by the time they are over, burying whole towns, sometimes even large cities like Riyadh, in a meter deep or more of sand.Fukushima is, without question, the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date. In fact, many scientists believe, and with good reason, that the Fukushima incident, which is far from over, is the world’s worst environmental catastrophe.
“While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer” Global Research, September 10, 2010. For a full account of Fukushima, see “Global Research Online Interactive Reader Series, Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War, The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation (Michel Chossudovsky, editor).
Now imagine several large nuclear reactors (Iran’s Bushehr reactor output, for example, is 1000 megawatts, compared to Fukushima Daiichi’s largest reactor which had an output of 784 megawatts), along with several uranium enrichment plants, and certainly military storage sites and quite likely even uranium mines, all bombed to dust within a matter of days. Moreover, unlike the Fukushima Daiichi reactors which suffered only partial meltdowns with much of the fuel rods and spent fuel storages remaining mostly intact, “all” of Iran’s nuclear fuel would be exploded into the atmosphere. And let us not forget that the US-Israeli military ordinances employed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities would certainly be tipped with depleted uranium, and very likely would include some mini-nukes.
Indeed, in regards nuclear disasters and environmental catastrophes, Fukushima would absolutely pale in comparison to that caused by the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. The nuclear fallout from such an event would be extreme, to put it mildly. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians would likely die within the first year of such a strike, while millions more would die within a decade or two of some form of radiation-induced cancer. And since a significant portion of that nuclear fallout would end up either immediately, or over the course of the next weeks and months in the Arabian Desert, where the winds, year after year, would gather it up along with the particles of sand and dust into gigantic roiling irradiated storms (remember, “hundreds” of such sand and dust storms annually), not a person living anywhere in the Gulf State region would be safe from exposure. The Persian Gulf, too, would soon be so irradiated and toxic and lifeless that it might as well be renamed the New Dead Sea.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/good-bye-dubai-bombing-irans-nuclear-facilities-would-leave-the-entire-gulf-states-region-virtually-uninhabitable/5334737
No Substantial Agreement Possible As Long As U.S. Refuses To Recognize Iran’s Nuclear Right...
TEHRAN – An article published by Al Jazeera on Friday says that as long as Washington refuses to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium, no substantial agreement will be possible.
Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) are engaged in a process of talks meant to help resolve the dispute over the country’s nuclear program.
--clip
Following are excerpts of the article:
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will meet with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, in Istanbul next week - on May 15. Purportedly, Ashton will see if the P5+1 dialogue with Iran can be put back on track after yet another round of nuclear talks with Iran failed last month.
Publicly, Western officials blame the failure either on the Islamic Republic’s upcoming presidential election or on that old fallback, Iranian “intransigence”. In reality, talks failed because America and its Western partners remain unwilling to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium under international safeguards.
As a sovereign state, Iran is entitled to enrich, if it chooses; as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is entitled to do so under safeguards. The NPT explicitly recognizes signatories’ “inalienable right” to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. That this inalienable right includes the right to enrich is clear from the NPT itself, its negotiating history, and decades of state practice, with multiple non-weapons state parties having developed safeguarded fuel-cycle infrastructures.
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http://tehrantimes.com/politics/107589-no-substantial-agreement-possible-as-long-as-us-refuses-to-recognize-irans-nuclear-right-article
Russia Eyes Stronger Naval Presence In Mediterranean
MOSCOW, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Navy plans to strengthen its Mediterranean task force and increase the number of its warships, Navy Commander Admiral Viktor Chirkov said Sunday.
Currently, the navy is forming the headquarters of the Mediterranean task force, Chirkov said during a celebration of the 230th anniversary of the Black Sea Fleet.
"We are selecting and appointing officers to posts in accordance with the headquarters structure. The headquarters will include twenty officers, mainly from the Black Sea Fleet," Chirkov told local media.
The Mediterranean task force will comprise warships from the Northern, Baltic, Black Sea Fleet and probably the Pacific Fleet, Chirkov said, adding it plans to have five to six warships and support vessels from those fleets starting from this year.
The number of warships in the task force could be increased, and nuclear submarines may also be included depending on the scope and complexity of future missions, he added.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/12/c_132376705.htm
U.S. Renews Allegations Of Chemical Weapons Usage In Syria
WASHINGTON/DAMASCUS, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The United States has renewed its allegations that Syria has used outlawed chemical weapons against rebels in the country's two-year-old conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that there was "strong evidence" that President Bashar al-Assad's troops employed poison gas against rebel forces.
Still, Kerry pushed the importance of talks to settle the crisis.
"It's not an easy path but it is a path I think we, as a matter of conscience, are obligated to go down," Kerry said during a Google+ Hangout appearance.
The White House said late last month that the United States had established with "varying degrees of confidence" that a sarin gas attack had occurred in Syria.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/11/c_132375256.htm
U.S. Diplomat Meets Afghan FM For Security Pact
KABUL, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul met Saturday here and discussed the details of the proposed security pact between the two countries, a joint statement released at the end of the meeting said.
"In the meeting, both sides reviewed progress in implementing the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA)'s shared vision of a secure, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan and discussed steps to strengthen our enduring partnership as sovereign nations," the statement added.
The Strategic Partnership Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States was inked by President Barack Obama and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai in May 2, 2012 here in Kabul.
If the proposed security pact was signed it would allow limited number of U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan after the 2014 pullout of NATO-led troops from the conflict-ridden country.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/11/c_132375274.htm
Are Israelis Free To Choose Whom To Marry?
In contemporary Israeli society, civil marriage, gay marriage, mixed couples and same-sex parenting appear to exist out in the open. But we live under the illusion that we have the freedom to choose whom and how to marry. In reality, we can’t marry someone from a different religion – even the type of wedding is dictated to us. These decrees harm freedom of religion and they don’t only affect Jews. In Arab society, the situation is even more challenging. A discussion about the topic took place in Haifa recently.
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