iran pulling money out of europe

The government of Iran is moving money from European Central Banks in a measure to avoid ramifications from possible U.N. sanctions over their nuclear program. Iran removed some U.N. seals from its main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, on January 10 and resumed research on nuclear fuel including small-scale enrichment after a 2 1/2-year freeze.

One source has stated that Iran is moving their money to Southeast Asia.

iran

Bin Laden offers Americans truce

In an audio tape broadcast on Aljazeera, Osama bin Laden has warned that al-Qaida was preparing an attack very soon, but also offered Americans a "long-term truce". The tape, broadcast on Thursday but dated to December last year, comes after a year of silence from the al-Qaida leader. The voice on the tape said heightened security in the United States is not the reason there have been no attacks there since the Sept. 11, suicide hijackings.

Instead, the reason is "because there are operations that need preparations," he said. Read More

News and politics

blog about nuclear war against iran

I found an interesting blog that details the plans for nuclear war against Iran. This states that the planning is in the final stages. This story goes on to say that there is no considerable objections from the European Union, like there was with the war in Iraq.

Another story talks about CONPLAN 8022, which is a limited nuclear strike or strikes against targets where infantry troops would not be needed. The strike plan is offensive and can be carried out by presidential order. The explanation given by administration experts calls these "small" bombs, which would have a moderate effect on the environment. The effect of the bomb would not be discernible above ground, the radioactive fallout would be negligible, and the "collateral damage" caused to civilians would be minimal.

Current Affairs

tokyo stock exchange knocks off early

Criminal investigation of an Internet start-up foced the Tokyo stock exchange to close early. It closed twenty minutes early due to the flow of orders to the exchange. The benchmark for the Tokyo Stock Exchange plunged 2.9 percent Wednesday. The Nikkei 225 index dropped 464.77 points to close at 15,341.18 points, its biggest one-day drop since May 10, 2004. Share prices extended losses from Tuesday, when the Nikkei fell 2.8 percent, following Japanese newspaper reports that the investigation into Livedoor that had started Monday was expanding. The index has fallen nearly 6 percent the last two days.

Investors and the Japanese public alike were stunned when prosecutors marched into the Tokyo headquarters of Livedoor Monday evening on suspicion of violation of securities laws by giving false information.

Livedoor is headed by 33-year-old Takafumi Horie, who has risen to celebrity status as a geeky entrepreneur - a rarity in Japan. He has made unsuccessful attempts to buy a media conglomerate and a baseball team and frequently appears on TV.

The national daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Livedoor is suspected of concealing a 1 billion yen ($8.7 million) deficit for the full-year results ending September 2004.

U.N. must stop Iran's nuclear weapons program

The United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France said today that the United Nations must act now to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program are going nowhere, top officials of the four nations said. An emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency to report on Iran's defiance to the U.N. Security Council was called for, a step that could lead to sanctions against Tehran, possibly including an embargo on Iran's oil exports. "Our talks with Iran have reached a dead end," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Berlin. "The council should call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. Rice said the four powers would consult with other nations, including Russia and China, two permanent members of the Security Council that have been less hostile to Iran's program. Rice said that even Russia and China have soundly denounced Iran's move on Tuesday to resume uranium enrichment by unsealing IAEA seals on its equipment. Enriched uranium can be used either to generate electricity or for nuclear weapons. Iran has said it intends only peaceful uses, but has rejected offers by the Europeans to provide uranium for nuclear power.

Current events

iran not worried over UN referral

Iran is "not worried" about its possible referral to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program. Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, the deputy to Ali Larijani who is Iran's chief official for the nuclear file said, "We should not be worried." Separately, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will press on with its nuclear program to avoid dependency on the leading nuclear energy powers.

Current Affairs

100 SUNS: documented nuclear testing

Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. 100 SUNS documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen, and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.

books

Culture

open XML

Microsoft Corporation plans a formal standard for its Office productivity applications and Ecma International accepted the Microsoft application. Ecma created Technical Committee 45 (TC45) to produce a formal standard of office productivity applications which is compatible with the Office Open XML Formats.

The Open XML standard will make Office compatibility easier for competing desktop application suites such as Sun Microsystems branded StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. Microsoft released Office 2003 schemas in late 2003. In June, 2005 the company said they planned to make the new XML file formats the default in Office "12" and available to anyone under a royalty-free license.

microsoft

open xml

iran's nuke program got help

The Iranians have been working on a nuclear bomb since 2000. Did the Clinton Administration sign off on a CIA operation that gave the Iranians a false set of firing instructions? What this did however was to give Iran the know-how to move on with their nuclear bomb program. The CIA program was called Operation Merlin, in which the CIA was to give flawed blueprints to Iran. The operation had a Russian go-between, but that person tipped the Iranians off to the flaws.

This operation was to have no known ties to the CIA. But why go get an agent from Russia when the Iranians were already getting help from the Russians to develop a nuclear bomb? Botched.

The intelligence community has been hit hard with revelations from whistle-blowers who may have been spied on themselves. Can the intelligence community recover? Maybe not completely. Can the answer be that difficult? Is the problem with the people or is it the times? Are we so full of leakers and traitors, that the answer is for the intelligence community to turn on itself?

We need leadership.

Iraq

News and politics

bird flu at the doorstep of Turkey

A child from the same family of eastern Turkey died from the bird flu. The virus has killed 74 people so far. The dead children (3) lived in a remote rural district of eastern Turkey near the Armenian and Iranian borders, in close proximity with poultry -- just like the east Asian victims.

He said the authorities had prepared a leaflet for locals detailing the precautionary measures they should take against the spread of bird flu and this was being distributed. Samples from Turkish patients were being analyzed in Britain.

bird flu

Current events