UN Endorses Iran’s Call for a ‘World Against Violence and Extremism’

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Photo Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Photo Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Three months after Iran’s president first invited the international community to embrace Tehran’s vision of a “world against violence and extremism” – or what he calls WAVE – the U.N. General Assembly has endorsed a resolution on the matter.

The Iranian text, whose 11 co-sponsors included Syria and Cuba, was approved “by consensus” on Wednesday; no member-state called for a recorded vote.

Several delegates did raise allegations of Iran’s own record of promoting “violence and extremism,” however, and the session in New York witnessed a heated exchange between the Iranian and Israeli ambassadors.

The WAVE resolution calls on all countries to unite against “violent extremism” in all its forms, including sectarian violence.

It also touches on a range of issues that most democratic governments would be keen to endorse, with references to eliminating violence against women; condemnation of attacks on religious sites; and the importance of tolerance, dialogue and the exercise of free expression.

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Putin: Jealous of Obama’s Surveillance State

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Photo Credit: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images

Photo Credit: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the U.S. National Security Agency, and even said he envies President Barack Obama in light of the NSA revelations “because he can get away with it.”

Putin’s comments at a Thursday news conference reflected support for the NSA surveillance as a necessary tool to fight terrorism, but added that government rules should “limit the appetite” of the data-collecting agency, CBS News reports.

The 16-year KGB veteran and former head of Russia’s primary espionage agency said that the American spy program “isn’t a cause for joy, it’s not a cause for repentance either.” He added that “on a political level, it’s necessary to limit the appetite of special services with certain rules.”

Russia granted former NSA contractor and leaker Edward Snowden temporary asylum in June, despite U.S. efforts for his return to America to face espionage and theft of government property charges.

Earlier this week, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the NSA’s mass collection of phone records is in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s ban of unreasonable searches, and a government appeal is likely to be issued in the near future.

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Gold Price Stumbles to 6-Month Low After Fed Stimulus Trim

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Photo Credit: Zeenews.com

Photo Credit: Zeenews.com

London: Gold slid more than 1 percent on Thursday to its lowest since late June after the U.S. Federal Reserve took its first step away from the ultra-loose monetary policy that had helped drive bullion prices to record highs in recent years.

The Fed said on Wednesday that the U.S. economy was finally strong enough for it to start scaling back its massive bond-buying scheme, winding down the era of easy money that saw gold rally to USD 1,920.30 an ounce in 2011.

Spot gold was down 1.2 percent at USD 1,203.85 an ounce at 1000 GMT, having earlier touched a low of USD 1,200.25. U.S. gold futures for February delivery were down USD 32.00 an ounce at USD 1,203.00.

That move came despite the Fed blunting its taper with a continued dovish message on interest rates – that tapering was not tightening.

“This is another sign of increasing normalisation for the world economy,” Macquarie analyst Matthew Turner said. “Gold’s insurance function is less desirable in that environment.”

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Former Iranian Presidential Advisor: Had Deal Not Been Reached in Geneva, Iran Would Have “Annihilated Israel” (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

An Iranian political analyst claimed last week that if a deal between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program had not been reached in Geneva, Iran would have annihilated Israel.

The comments by Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini, a former political advisor to Iranian President Khatami, aired on Syrian News TV on December 11. They were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

In fact, said Al-Hosseini, had a deal not been reached in Geneva, President Barack Obama would have had to kiss the hands of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in order to prevent an Iranian attack on Israel.

“Believe me, President Obama tried five times to get a free handshake from President Rouhani, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly – and he failed,” said Al-Hosseini.

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‘Superbugs’ Found Breeding in Sewage Plants

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Photo Credit: Yi Luo/Nankai University

Photo Credit: Yi Luo/Nankai University

Tests at two wastewater treatment plants in northern China revealed antibiotic-resistant bacteria were not only escaping purification but also breeding and spreading their dangerous cargo. Joint research by scientists from Rice, Nankai and Tianjin universities found “superbugs” carrying New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1), a multidrug-resistant gene first identified in India in 2010, in wastewater disinfected by chlorination.

They found significant levels of NDM-1 in the effluent released to the environment and even higher levels in dewatered sludge applied to soils. The study, led by Rice University environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez, appeared this month in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters. “It’s scary,” Alvarez said.

“There’s no antibiotic that can kill them. We only realized they exist just a little while ago when a Swedish man got infected in India, in New Delhi. Now, people are beginning to realize that more and more tourists trying to go to the upper waters of the Ganges River are getting these infections that cannot be treated. “We often think about sewage treatment plants as a way to protect us, to get rid of all of these disease-causing constituents in wastewater.

But it turns out these microbes are growing. They’re eating sewage, so they proliferate. In one wastewater treatment plant, we had four to five of these superbugs coming out for every one that came in.” Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been raising alarms for years, particularly in hospital environments where public health officials fear they can be transferred from patient to patient and are very difficult to treat.

Bacteria harboring the encoding gene that makes them resistant have been found on every continent except for Antarctica, the researchers wrote. NDM-1 is able to make such common bacteria as E. coli, salmonella and K. pneumonias resistant to even the strongest available antibiotics. The only way to know one is infected is when symptoms associated with these bacteria fail to respond to antibiotics.

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Merkel Compared NSA to Stasi in Heated Encounter with Obama

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Photo Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.

The German chancellor also told the US president that America’s National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.

Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: “This is like the Stasi.”

The newspaper also reported that Merkel was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, “the NSA clearly couldn’t be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out.”

Snowden is to testify on the NSA scandal to a European parliament inquiry next month, to the anger of Washington which is pressuring the EU to stop the testimony.

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Boston Bomber Told Others He Was Acting Under “Majestic Mind Control”

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Photo Credit: Barcroft Media

Photo Credit: Barcroft Media

Slain suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev said he heard voices in his head and believed in the concept of influencing others by way of “majestic mind control,” according to a new report.

Journalists at The Boston Globe published this weekend the result of a five-month investigation into the Tsarnaev family, and their report reveals new, never-before-released information about the 26-year-old Chechen boxer who, along with his younger brother Dzhokhar, is accused of orchestrating a terror attack at last April’s Boston Marathon race which killed three and left hundreds injured.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died during a shootout with police days after the event, and his brother is currently awaiting trial in federal court in Massachusetts. With the high-profile terrorist case likely a long way from being settled, little attention has been paid to the story in the months since the dust cleared after the event.

Sally Jacobs, David Filipov, and Patricia Wen of the Globe have spent nearly half a year probing the Tsarnaevs’ past, and with their latest report they raise new questions about the brothers – particularly regarding the mental state of the supposed mastermind, Tamerlan.

“He believed in majestic mind control, which is a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist,” Donald Larking, a 67-year-old man who attended a Boston mosque with the older brother, told the Globe.

“The full article is from RT News, a website with apparent connections to the Russian government. However, the source material for this article is from the Boston Globe.”

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Analysis: China Needs Western Help for Nuclear Export Ambitions

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

China’s investment in Britain’s 16 billion pound Hinkley Point project is its first foray into Europe’s nuclear power market and a marker of its global ambitions, but its firms will depend on foreign partners if they are to fulfill them.

China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) plan to take a combined 30-40 percent stake in a consortium led by French utility EDF to build French-designed EPR reactors in southwest England.

China has the world’s largest nuclear building program at home and hopes to leverage this into a nuclear export industry.

While China has already built reactors for its ally Pakistan, Hinkley Point is its first nuclear project in a developed country, and Beijing hopes the UK credentials will help promote its two nuclear giants on the global stage.

But industry analysts say gaps in the Chinese supply chain, fears of political interference and inexperience in the economics of nuclear power mean the firms will struggle to go it alone.

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China Imposes First-Ever West Coast Shellfish Ban

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Photo Credit: KUOW

Photo Credit: KUOW

China has suspended imports of shellfish from the west coast of the United States — an unprecedented move that cuts off a $270 million Northwest industry from its biggest export market.

China said it decided to impose the ban after recent shipments of geoduck clams from Northwest waters were found by its own government inspectors to have high levels of arsenic and a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The restriction took effect last week and China’s government says it will continue indefinitely. It applies to clams, oysters and all other two-shelled bivalves harvested from the waters of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Northern California. U.S. officials think the contaminated clams were harvested in Washington or Alaska. Right now they’re waiting to hear back from Chinese officials for more details that will help them identify the exact source.

State and federal agencies oversee inspection and certification to prevent the shipment of tainted shellfish. Jerry Borchert of the Washington Department of Health said he’s never encountered such a ban based on the Chinese government’s assertion that these U.S. safeguards failed to screen out contaminated seafood.

“They’ve never done anything like that, where they would not allow shellfish from this entire area based on potentially two areas or maybe just one area. We don’t really know yet,” Borchert said.

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Chinese Unmanned Spacecraft Lands on Moon

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGER

Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGER

China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon on Saturday, state media reported, in the first such “soft-landing” since 1976, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union in managing to accomplish such a feat.

The Chang’e 3, a probe named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit buggy, which will dig and conduct geological surveys.

China has been increasingly ambitious in developing its space programs, for military, commercial and scientific purposes.

It has moved in lock step with its emergence as a major global economic and political power.

“The dream for lunar exploration once again lights up the China Dream,” Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

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