Russia Nuke Deal

Obama may trust Russia and Iran for nuke deal UPI — U.S. President Barack Obama has sent President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia a letter suggesting that the proposed U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic may not be necessary if Moscow can convince Iran to curtail its nuclear aspirations. The Moscow newspaper Kommersant and The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Obama's message Tuesday. click to read complete article

Reports said Obama offered to drop U.S. missile shield in exchange for help with Iran UPI — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday he has received no U.S. offer to drop its European missile shield defense plan in exchange for help with Iran. A number of U.S. newspapers and Russian news outlets reported U.S. President Barack Obama had sent a letter to Medvedev, offering to drop plans to install a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic if Russia would dissuade Iran from pursuing its nuclear program. click to read complete article

Obama’s secret letter offers deal to Russia JTA — President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia's president offering to retreat from deploying a missile defense system in Europe if Russia intensified its commitment to isolate Iran. Moscow has not responded to the letter that was hand-delivered to President Dmitri Medvedev three weeks ago, The New York Times reported late Monday. click to read complete article

Bernanke Recovery

Bernanke says keep an eye on recovery UPI — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called on U.S. lawmakers to view the federal budget with financial stability in mind. Bernanke increased his rhetoric on the economy Tuesday, telling the Senate Budget Committee the past 18 months have been a period of "extraordinary turbulence." click to read complete article

Euro extends losses vs dollar as stocks turn negative Reuters — The euro extended losses against the dollar on Tuesday as U.S. stocks turned negative after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said more must be done to secure financial market stability. The euro hit a session low of $1.2522 , according to Reuters data, after earlier rising as high as $1.2677. It was last changing hands at $1.2542, down 0.3 percent on the day. click to read complete article

Bernanke Says U.S. May Need to Expand Bank Rescue Bloomberg — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said policy makers may need to expand aid to the banking system beyond the $700 billion already approved and take other aggressive measures even at the cost of soaring fiscal deficits. “Without a reasonable degree of financial stability, a sustainable recovery will not occur,” the Fed chairman said today in testimony prepared for the Senate Budget Committee. “Although progress has been made on the financial front since last fall, more needs to be done.” click to read complete article

Bush Memo's Released

Bush-era memo: President has right to transfer prisoners anywhere despite torture concerns Baltimore Sun — A newly released Bush administration legal memo from 2002 claimed that the president has an unfettered right to transfer suspected terrorists to other governments without regard for whether they would be subject to torture. The memo appears to underpin the Bush administration's use of extraordinary rendition, a secret program of moving terror detainees to nations where they were imprisoned and, in some cases, reportedly tortured. click to read complete article

Bush Administration Acknowledged Denying Constitutional Rights Politonomist — The Obama administration Monday acknowledged nearly a decade of constitutional tampering by the Bush administration, releasing a number of Justice Department and CIA memos which identified and spoke of the blatant “just a piece of paper” attitude seen in the Bush administration’s reign. Anti-terror memos which granted extra-constitutional search and seizure powers, and the acknowledgment of the destruction of 92 videotapes of interrogations and mistreatment of terrorist suspects that may have been considered torture. click to read complete article

Bush-era memos saw rights limits in US terror war Reuters — The U.S. military could have kicked in doors to raid a suspected terrorist cell in the United States without a warrant under a Bush-era legal memo the Justice Department made public on Monday. The memo, from Oct. 23, 2001, also said constitutional free-speech protections and a prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure could take a back seat to military needs in fighting terrorism inside the country. click to read complete article

Pledges to Palestine

U.S. offers $900 million to Palestinians CNN — has offered more than $900 million to help the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Monday. "Only by acting now can we turn this crisis into an opportunity that moves us closer to our shared goals," Clinton said at a Gaza donors conference hosted by Egypt in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. click to read complete article

Donors pledge $4.5bn to help Palestinians Financial Times — International donors yesterday pledged $4.48bn in new money to help the Palestinian economy and rebuild Gaza. The pledge came as Hillary Clinton called for urgent action by Arabs, Israelis and the international community to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and move towards peace. click to read complete article

Russia sends Palestinians armored vehicles International Herald Tribune — Russia's foreign minister is reportedly saying the country will soon deliver 50 armored vehicles to the Palestinian Authority. The Interfax news agency quoted Sergey Lavrov as saying Monday that Russia would provide the Palestinians the vehicles "in the very near future." He spoke during a flight to Spain from Egypt, where he met with other leaders from the Quartet seeking Mideast peace — the United States, Russia, the United Nations and European Union. click to read complete article

Climate Change

Climate Change Warnings too Tame Solomonstarnews — IT seems the dire warnings about future devastation sparked by global warming have not been dire enough, top climate scientists warned. It has been just over a year since the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a landmark report warning of rising sea levels, expanding deserts, more intense storms and the extinction of up to 30 percent of plant and animal species. click to read complete article

Climate Change, Energy Priorities Chemical and Engineering News — RATHER THAN BEMOANING the high cost of combating climate change, President Barack Obama in his first address to Congress laid out a vision tying America's future economic growth to its success in developing carbon-free energy technologies. Recent activity in Congress also underscores the high priority that climate change and clean energy have achieved. In his Feb. 25 speech, Obama stressed that three areas—energy, health care, and education—are "absolutely critical to our economic future." click to read complete article

India: West Should not use Recession as an Excuse to Stop Investments in Renewable Energy Red Green and Blue — India’s special envoy on Climate Change has demanded that developed nations invest more in renewable energy projects and do more to reduce their carbon emissions. The Indian government wants the developed nations to ‘re-double’ their efforts on funding clean energy projects and not let the current economic crisis be a roadblock in those efforts. The envoy also reiterated that his government was not yet in a position to pledge to any mandatory emission reduction goals. He reminded the developed nation of the ‘historical responsibility’ to bring down their carbon emission levels. click to read complete article

Iran and The Bomb?

IAEA officials: All materials at Natanz under control Tehran Times — Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asqar Soltanieh said on Friday the agency officials have confirmed that all materials at Natanz uranium enrichment facilities are under their control. Soltanieh made the remarks in reaction to some media reports about the declared amount of low-enriched uranium at Natanz. click to read complete article

How Close Is Iran to a Bomb? Newsweek — Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium to make one atomic bomb—at least theoretically. Independent analysts say that became clear after the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency issued its latest inspection report on Feb. 19, revealing the presence of 1,010 kilograms of the material Washington and the Europeans hoped would never exist. click to read complete article

'Iran has enough material for bomb' Jerusalem Post — Teheran probably has the material necessary to make a nuclear weapon, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday, while Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Iranians were not yet close to attaining a weapon. Asked on CNN if Teheran had enough nuclear material for the construction of an atomic bomb, Mullen said: "We think they do, quite frankly." click to read complete article

U.N. Racism Conference

US to boycott UN racism conference Agence France Press — The Obama administration said Friday that the United States will boycott an upcoming U.N. conference on racism unless its final document is changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion. At the same time, it said the U.S. would participate as an observer in meetings of the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body that was shunned by the Bush administration for anti-Israel statements and failing to act on abuses in Sudan and other states. click to read complete article

U.S. joins Canada in boycotting UN racism conference Canwest News Service — The United States signalled Friday it will follow Canada's lead in boycotting a major United Nations conference on racism that critics say will be a forum to attack Israel and the West. The gathering known as ``Durban II'' is a follow to the 2001 conference in the South African city that collapsed into Arab- and Muslim-led condemnations of Israel, and African-led calls for the West to pay huge reparations for slavery. click to read complete article

Israel applauds US boycott of UN racism conference Agence France Presse — Israel on Saturday applauded Washington's decision to boycott a UN conference on racism that it considers anti-Semitic. "Under the fig leaf of combatting racism, this conference is blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said. "The decision of the United States should be an example to other countries that share our values," she added in a statement from her office. click to read complete article