NEWS,03.03.2013

Minister: ECB must do more for jobless

A French official says the European Central Bank is shirking its responsibilities toward Europe's unemployed.Industrial Recovery Minister Arnaud Montebourg's comments go against a custom that politicians not meddle in the ECB's work.Montebourg told Europe 1 radio Sunday: "It's not dealing with growth. It's not taking care of the unemployed. It's not taking care of the European people. And it has a duty to do so."He called on ECB President Mario Draghi to buy the debt of European countries. The ECB has a program to do just that - but countries must first agree to reforms.Montebourg also said the bank is keeping the euro strong, which is hurting exports. "What I am asking (Draghi) is to give us the weapons to fight unfair offshoring."

Thailand to end domestic ivory trade

Thailand will end its domestic ivory trade, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced on Sunday, promising legislation that could help the country avoid international trade sanctions after criticism by environmental groups.The announcement of legislation to end the ivory trade came at the opening ceremony of a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) conference in Bangkok."This will help protect all forms of elephants including Thailand's wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa," Yingluck said in a statement.The CITES conference runs until March 14.Environmental groups such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and TRAFFIC, which monitors the wildlife trade, have been calling for CITES to sanction Thailand, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo for their part in the illegal ivory trade.Thailand is accused by conservation groups of fuelling the already rampant slaughter of African elephants and trade in their ivory through lax enforcement and regulation of its legal domestic market, which the country has never publicly committed to curbing before.The largely unregulated market is ideal for laundering illegal African ivory into its system before being sold on, environmental groups say.Groups said it was not clear how Thailand would go about ending its domestic trade, nor how long it would take."Prime Minister Shinawatra now needs to provide a timeline for this ban and ensure that it takes place as a matter of urgency, because the slaughter of elephants continues," said Carlos Drews, head of WWF's delegation to CITES.Thailand is the largest illegal ivory market in the world behind China with much of the ivory being bought by foreign tourists, the WWF says.

China targets 15% of satellite market

China is looking to increase its share of the global commercial satellite launching business, targeting a 15% share by 2020, a leading space program official said Saturday.China hopes to increase its market share by establishing strategic alliances with major launch services providers and satellite manufacturers, along with developing its own technology, the deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, Liang Xiaohong, told the official Xinhua News Agency.China has just 3% of the market now, but the goal laid out by Liang points to its ambitions to become a major player in space, just one decade after becoming only the third country after the US and Russia to launch a man into space.Elsewhere in the Xinhua interview, Liang said China's first solid-fuel rocket that could be launched on short notice would be ready to make its first flight by 2016.China has a well-developed range of Long March rockets for use in commercial launches, all of which now mainly burn liquid fuel that must be pumped in just prior to launch. Solid fuel rockets can be kept in storage, then fired when needed, making them ideal for military use in launching ballistic missiles.Liquid-fueled rockets are generally considered best-suited for launching large payloads, while solid rockets are used for placing smaller satellites weighing less than 2 tons into low Earth orbit."The development of the Long March 11 will greatly improve China's capabilities to rapidly enter space and meet the emergency launching demand in case of disasters and emergencies," Liang was quoted by Xinhua as saying.On Friday, China's space program said it would send three astronauts to its orbiting space station this summer as part of preparations to establish an even larger permanent presence above Earth.The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, which will likely include one female astronaut, will spend two weeks aboard the Tiangong 1, where the trio will spend two weeks conducting tests of the station's docking system and its systems for supporting life and carrying out scientific work.Two Chinese spacecraft, one of them manned, have docked already with Tiangong 1 since it was launched in September 2011.The station is to be replaced in around 2020 with a permanent space station that will weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station.

Iran buying time - Netanyahu

Renewed international efforts to negotiate curbs on Iran's disputed nuclear programme have backfired by giving it more time to work on building a bomb, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.His remarks on the inconclusive 26-27 February meeting between Iran and six world powers signalled impatience by Israel, which has threatened to launch preemptive war on its arch-foe, possibly in the coming months, if it deems diplomacy a dead end.Senior US diplomat Wendy Sherman flew in to brief Israel about the Kazakh-hosted talks, in which Tehran, which denies seeking nuclear arms, was offered modest relief from sanctions in return for halting mid-level uranium enrichment.There was no breakthrough. The sides will reconvene in Almaty on 5-6 April after holding technical talks in Istanbul."My impression from these talks is that the only thing that is gained from them is a buying of time, and through this time-buying Iran intends to continue enriching nuclear material for an atomic bomb and is indeed getting closer to this goal," Netanyahu told his cabinet in remarks aired by Israeli media.Extrapolating from UN reports on Iran's enrichment of uranium to 20% fissile purity, a short technical step from weapons-grade, Netanyahu has set a mid-2013 "red line" for denying the Islamic republic the fuel needed for a first bomb.Iranian media reported on Sunday the country was building around 3 000 new advanced enrichment centrifuges, a development that could accelerate the nuclear project.The prospect of unilateral Israeli strikes, and the likely wide-ranging reprisals by Iran and its regional allies, worries Washington, which wants to pursue diplomacy as it winds down costly military commitments abroad.In an attempt to make their proposals more palatable to Tehran, the United States and five other world powers appeared to have softened previous demands in Almaty - for example regarding their requirement that the Iranians ship out their stockpile of the higher-grade uranium.A senior Israeli official said that while the Netanyahu government had hoped for a tougher line by the so-called P5+1, it was resigned to awaiting the results of this round of talks."At the end of the day, what matters is that the Iranians end their enrichment, whether it's through shutting down their facilities or through more nuanced technical safeguards," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.The official would not comment on how or if the latest diplomacy had affected the readiness of Israel, which is widely assumed to have the region's only nuclear arsenal, to go to war.Iran may have warded off that threat by turning some of its 20% pure uranium into fuel rods for a research reactor.The international standoff and shifting timelines are expected to dominate US President Barack Obama's trip to Israel later this month. The Israelis urge a tougher posture on Iran from their ally, which has a hefty military presence in the Gulf and says it is poised to use force as a last resort.Israel's dovish president, Shimon Peres, sounded more upbeat after meeting Sherman last Thursday. Peres said he had "total faith in the Obama administration, in its commitment and its actions in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons".Obama's Israel visit has been overshadowed by local politics too, given the rightist Netanyahu's failure so far to build a new coalition government after he narrowly won a 22 January ballot.Appealing to potential party allies to rally to him in the name of national security, Netanyahu told his cabinet: "To my regret this is not happening, and in the coming days I will continue my efforts to unify and galvanise forces ahead of the major national and international challenges that we face."

Iran building 3 000 advanced centrifuges

Iran is building about 3 000 advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges, Iranian media reported on Sunday, in a development likely to add to Western concerns about the Islamic state's disputed nuclear programme.Iran announced earlier this year that it would install the new-generation centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, but Sunday's reports in Iranian agencies appeared to be the first time a specific figure had been given.Iranian media on Sunday paraphrased Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, as saying Iran was producing 3 000 new-generation centrifuges."The final production line of these centrifuges has reached an end and soon the early generations of these centrifuges with low efficiency will be set aside," Abbasi-Davani said, according to the Fars news agency.The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier this year that 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been put in place at the facility near the town of Natanz in central Iran. They were not yet operating.If launched successfully, such machines could enable Iran to speed up significantly its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used in a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful purposes.

Iran frees 14 journalists - report

Iran has freed 14 journalists working for reformist papers who were arrested in January and accused of co-operating with a "Western-linked network", the reformist Shargh newspaper reported on Sunday.The newspaper said the journalists were released from jail after posting bail, while four others were still behind bars.At the time of their arrest in late January the intelligence ministry said in a statement that the journalists belonged to "one of the biggest media networks" linked to the West.Their network, the statement said, was established by the BBC and operates "in co-operation with several Western governments".The ministry said their goal was to "exploit what they learned during the sedition period" after the 2009 presidential election, which Iran accuses the West and Western media, including the BBC, of inciting.The election, which returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power despite reformist opposition candidates alleging fraud, triggered protests which were met by a bloody regime crackdown.Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticised the arrests, urging Iran to free the journalists.But the intelligence ministry dismissed such calls.Tehran deems as hostile the Persian services of various international media, including the BBC Persian, the Voice of America and Radio Farda - a US-funded Prague-based Persian radio.According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 45 journalists were in Iranian prisons at the start of December 2012.The journalists work for various reformist outlets such as Shargh, Arman, Bahar and Etemad newspapers, the Aseman weekly, as well as the ILNA news agency.Shargh identified the freed journalists as Pouria Alami, Emily Amraei, Javad Daliri, Milad Fadaei, Narges Jodaki, Soleiman Mohammadi, Akbar Montajabi, Pejman Mousavi, Motahareh Shafiey, Hossein Yaghchi, Fatemeh Sagharchi, Reyhaneh Tabatabaee, Keyvan Mehregan and Pejman Mousavi.The report also added that Sasan Aghaei, Nasrin Takhayori, Ehsan Mazandarani, and Saba Azarpeyk are still behind bars.

Chavez 'working during chemotherapy'

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is still in charge and mulling political, social and economic policies even as he receives a new round of chemotherapy, his vice president said on Saturday.Vice President Nicolas Maduro said that the 58-year-old socialist leader, who is convalescing in seclusion at a Caracas military hospital, sent "guidance" to his Cabinet as recently as Friday."He is staying informed and in charge as the chief who was ratified by our people various times," Maduro said at an event broadcast on state-run television.The opposition says the government is lying about Chavez's condition and doubts Maduro's claim that Chavez held a five-hour meeting with his cabinet on February 22, giving orders in writing because a tracheal tube hinders his speech.But Maduro repeated that the meeting took place. He insisted that the president sent more instructions the next day with Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, his son-in-law, before giving more guidance on Friday.The leftist leader's chosen successor Maduro showed a dossier containing "political, social and economic actions" that Chavez has requested "to continue strengthening the economy to face the economic war of the parasitic bourgeoisie".The "central document" will be sent to Chavez, he said, adding that the government was "respecting his treatment, we are not acting in an invasive way in his treatment."Chavez, who was first diagnosed with cancer in the pelvic region June 2011, underwent a fourth round of surgery in Cuba in December. The government has never disclosed the exact nature, location and severity of the cancer.Maduro revealed for the first time late Friday that Chavez began a new cycle of chemotherapy in January and decided to return to Caracas last month to continue a "more intense" phase of treatment.Chavez was in "good spirits" but fighting for his life, Maduro said as he rejected growing rumours about the president's health.One of Chavez's daughters, Maria Gabriela, responded on Saturday to the publication online of a picture of her looking sad at the mass."Sadness? I can't be happy when my dad is sick! But I continue to cling to my God," she wrote on Twitter."At the next mass I will have to dance and laugh! I always thought that a mass was something serious! People are very crazy," she wrote.The once omnipresent leader has not come out in public in almost three months. Only four pictures were released, on February 15, showing him in his Havana hospital bed, smiling with his two daughters.Around 50 university students have spent every night this week chained to each other in the middle of a Caracas streets, demanding that the government "tell the truth" about Chavez.The government has accused the opposition and "fascist" foreign media of spreading rumours about Chavez to destabilise the nation sitting atop the world's largest proven oil reserves."We want to see Chavez recover and healthy, and we want him to be in peace, doing the treatment that needs to be done," said Foreign Minister Elias Jaua."Those who don't want Chavez to recover are those who use blackmail, criminal pressure, miserable pressure that we will not cede to," Jaua said.Maduro, meanwhile, accused opposition leader Henrique Capriles of "conspiring" against Venezuela during trips to the United States and Colombia, and warned him not to "violate the rule of law".He said Capriles, the Miranda state governor who lost to Chavez in the October presidential election, had met with "paramilitaries" in Colombia and was now in the United States.The vice president said Capriles travelled to Miami and New York this weekend and was planning to meet Roberta Jacobson, the US State Department's top official for Latin America.