Saturday, February 4, 2012

Iran says oil ban will not halt nuclear work

4:36 AM McGhori

TEHRAN: Iran’s oil minister said the Islamic state would not retreat from its nuclear programme even if its crude oil exports grind to a halt, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday. But he also called on the European Union, which accounted for a quarter of Iranian crude oil sales in the third quarter of 2011, to review its decision last week to bank Iranian oil imports from July 1. “We will not abandon our just nuclear course, even if we cannot sell one drop of oil,” Rostam Qasemi told reporters, according to IRNA. Tension with the West rose last month when Washington and the European Union imposed the toughest sanctions yet on Iran in a bid to force it to provide more information on its nuclear programme....
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US urges international community to fund Afghan troops

4:33 AM McGhori

MUNICH: US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta urged the international community on Saturday to help pay for strong Afghan security forces despite worldwide economic pressure. The United States is spending around $12 billion a year to train the Afghan security force (ANSF), which is expected to rise to 352,000 men in order to take over security when Nato combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014. “To sustain sufficient security, the ANSF requires adequate financial support,” Panetta said in a speech in Munich, recalling that the international community committed to helping Afghanistan at a Bonn conference in December. The United States has forecast that the annual price tag of training and equipping Afghan security forces in coming...
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More than 220 dead as big freeze grips Europe

3:12 AM McGhori

KIEV: Temperatures have plunged to new lows in Europe where a week-long cold snap has now claimed more than 220 lives as forecasters warned that the big freeze would tighten its grip over the weekend. A total of 223 people have died from the cold weather in the last seven days according to an AFP tally, with Ukraine suffering the heaviest toll. People have been found dead on the streets in some countries, while thousands have been trapped in mountain villages in Serbia. In Italy, Venice’s canals started freezing over and even Rome was dusted in snow. The lowest temperatures recorded in Europe were in the southwest of the Czech Republic, where the mercury dropped as low as minus 38.1 degrees Celsius overnight Thursday. The...
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Record civilian death toll in Afghan war last year: UN

3:10 AM McGhori

KABUL: A record number civilians were killed in Afghanistan’s decade-long war last year, with a dramatic rise in the number of deaths from suicide attacks, the United Nations reported Saturday. A total of 3,021 civilians died — mostly at the hands of insurgents — up eight per cent from 2,790 in 2010, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) said in its annual report. It was the fifth straight year that the toll has risen, with a total of 11,864 civilian lives claimed by the conflict since 2007. The report stands in contrast to an upbeat assessment of 2011 as “remarkably successful” by Nato-led forces, who are preparing to withdraw combat troops in 2014 and hand security over to the Afghan government. The...
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