UN: Global Prosperity is Causing Global Warming

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ali al-Saadi/Pool

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ali al-Saadi/Pool

Growing global economies through expanded trade between rich and poor countries is driving global warming, according to a draft report from the United Nation’s climate bureaucracy. The international agency said that rich countries are “outsourcing” carbon dioxide emissions to poor countries through increasing international trade.

The draft report, obtained by the U.K.’s Guardian, argues that these “outsourced” emissions come “in the form of electronic devices such as smartphones, cheap clothes and other goods manufactured in China and other rising economies but consumed in the U.S. and Europe.”

Much of those increased emissions came from coal plants in China and other developing economies that are used to power factories that produce goods for U.S. and European consumers, the U.N. report says.

“A growing share of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in developing countries is released in the production of goods and services exported, notably from upper-middle-income countries to high-income countries,” the draft report reads. “A growing share of global emissions is released in the manufacture of products that are traded across international borders.”

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Ex-Vatican Accountant Hit with New Money Laundering Charge

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Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

A former Vatican accountant already under house arrest and on trial for alleged corruption and attempted money laundering has been notified of fresh charges against him, Italy’s financial police said on Tuesday.

The police said in a statement that they had seized Monsignor Nunzio Scarano’s luxury 17-room apartment and blocked nearly 9.0 million euros ($12 million) on current accounts linked to the senior Italian cleric.

The Vatican in July last year said it had already frozen assets belonging to Scarano and the police on Tuesday said these funds amounted to 2.2 million euros.

“This is very significant,” the police said in a statement, a reference to unprecedented levels of cooperation between Vatican and Italian judicial authorities on a high-profile financial crime case.

Vatican bank spokesman Max Hohenberg told AFP: “All activity on his accounts over the past 10 years has been extracted, analysed and submitted to authorities.

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Poll: Two Thirds of Israelis Think Obama Will Let Iran Go Nuclear

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Photo Credit: Truth Revolt

Photo Credit: Truth Revolt

According to new poll, a huge majority of Israelis do not trust President Obama with regard to Iran, and believe Obama will allow Iran to go nuclear. Only 22 percent of Israeli voters believed that Obama would “ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapon.”

Almost two-thirds of Israelis thought that statement was untrue, and 15 percent gave no answer. President Obama has just a 33 percent favorable rating in Israel, as opposed to a 50 percent disapproval rating. Even those who favor Obama are split evenly on whether or not he will prevent Iran from going nuclear.

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Russian Security Forces Searching Sochi for Suspected Terrorist

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Photo Credit: Telegraph

Photo Credit: Telegraph

Russian security forces are searching Sochi for a suspected terrorist who is feared to be planning to target the Olympic Games, according to a notice distributed throughout the city.

A description distributed to hotels in the area says that the FSB, Russia’s internal security service, has received information that Ruzanna Ibragimova, the widow of an insurgent “neutralised” by security forces, may have travelled from Dagestan to the Sochi area on January 11 or 12.

“According to our information Ms Ibragimova may be used by the ring leaders of illegal armed groups for the organisation of terrorist acts in the zone of the 2014 Olympics,” the notice says.

While the notice does not mention the term, the widows of fighters killed in the on-going conflict between Islamist separatists and Russian forces in the North Caucasus have been used in the past as suicide bombers.

Russia has deployed 40,000 police and security personnel in a “ring of steel” around Sochi to deter attacks by Islamist militants from the nearby North Caucasus republics.

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Iran ‘2 to 3 Weeks’ from Nuclear Bomb (+audio)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

If Iran breaks its deal with the West tomorrow, the country would be only two to three weeks away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear weapon, according to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Heinonen directed the safeguards division of the United Nations body charged with enforcing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was asked Sunday on Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show about the timeframe in response to statements from Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, who boasted last week that Tehran can nix its deal with the West and resume enriching uranium to 20-percent levels within one day if it so desires.

Heinonen responded that if Iran wanted it would currently take the country “two, three weeks to have enough uranium hexafluoride high-enriched for one single weapon.”

He told Klein: “If [Iran] in reality [abrogates the deal] tomorrow, they still have quite a substantial stock of uranium hexafluoride, which is enriched to 20 percent. … And then technically, when Iran has committed to this month to certain parts of the processes in such a way these tandem cascades are not anymore connected with each other, you can indeed put them back in one day’s time.

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Iraqi Government Announces Offensive Against Al Qaeda

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Iraqi government forces and allied tribal militias launched an all-out offensive Sunday to push Al Qaeda militants from a provincial capital, an assault that killed or wounded some 20 police officers and government-allied tribesmen, officials said.

Since late December, members of Iraq’s Al Qaeda branch — known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — have taken over parts of Ramadi, the capital of the largely Sunni western province of Anbar. They also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah, along with other non-Al Qaeda groups that also oppose the Shiite-led government.

A military officer and two local officials said fierce clashes raged through Sunday night in parts of Ramadi, but gave no details.

The two Anbar officials said 20 police officers and allied tribesmen were either killed or wounded during the assault. The officials were unable to provide a breakdown of the casualties.

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China Decries U.S. Spending Bill

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE

Photo Credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE

China’s Commerce Ministry has condemned a $1.1-trillion spending bill passed by the U.S. Congress last week over clauses that limit technological purchases from the Asian giant, saying they clash with the principles of fair trade.

The bill, signed by President Barack Obama on Friday, included a cyber-espionage review process for federal purchases of technology from China, a measure incorporated last year amid growing U.S. concern over Chinese cyber attacks.

In a weekend statement, China’s Commerce Ministry said the move “went against the principles of fair trade” as it sought to curb purchases of Chinese technology and export of satellites and parts to China.

“China is resolutely opposed,” the ministry said in comments attributed to an unnamed official in its U.S. trade division.

The bill sent a wrong message, did not aid exchanges and cooperation in the high-tech field and would have a negative effect on Chinese companies, besides harming the interests of U.S. firms, it added.

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Nuke Inspectors in Iran Ahead of Monday’s Deal Deadline, as Senate Weighs More Sanctions

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

A team of international inspectors arrived Saturday in Iran, a key step toward fulfilling a deal the country has struck with the United States and other world powers to curtail its nuclear program.

The team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrived in Tehran and will visit Natanz and Fordo, Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, according to Iranian state television.

The deal takes effect Monday, amid continued concern on Capitol Hill and elsewhere about whether the Iranian government will fulfill its part of the deal, in exchange for an easing of international sanctions.

Under the international deal, Iran will limit its enrichment of uranium in return for some painful economic sanctions being lifted. The deal will last for six months as Iran and the world powers negotiate a final deal.

In return, some Western sanctions to be lifted against Iran. The deal will last for six months as Iran and the world powers negotiate a final deal.

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Israel Picking Up Tab for Abortions

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Israel’s newly-passed health budget for 2014 includes a significant increase in government funding for legal abortions, a move that Sandy Shoshani, national director of the pro-life organization Be’ad Chaim, says is a serious indictment of the nation’s spiritual condition.

Last month, the Health Basket Committee – which annually decides which medications, treatments and procedures will be covered or subsidized by the government – determined that the previous practice of paying for abortions for women under the age of 19 and over the age of 40 wasn’t enough.

Included in the new budget is 16 million shekels (USD $4.5 million) to also cover abortions for women between the ages of 20-33.

While all women seeking a legal abortion must receive special approval, the committee in charge of making that decision rubber-stamps 97 percent of requests, or well over 20,000 abortions each year.

Reports in recent years were that abortion rates were falling in Israel, despite the Jewish state’s very liberal laws on the matter. Since the 1990s, there had been a 20 percent drop in the number of legal abortions requested and performed. But the new legislation and government funding are expected to result in an additional 6,300 abortions per year.

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Up to 21, Mostly Foreigners, Killed in Kabul Suicide Attack

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI

Photo Credit: REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI

Up to 21 people were killed in Friday’s attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in the Afghan capital, after a suicide bomber blew himself up near the entrance and gunmen burst in to spray diners with bullets.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) representative in Afghanistan and four United Nations staff were among the dead, who included 13 foreign nationals, police said.

Islamist Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack on a Lebanese restaurant in the capital’s central Wazir Akbar Khan district, which hosts many embassies and restaurants catering for expatriates.

“Such targeted attacks against civilians are completely unacceptable and are in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. “They must stop immediately.”

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