Sunday, Jan 18th
Last update09:09:41 AM GMT
International Glance
Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.
The disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund – who lost his job amid claims he tried to rape a New York chambermaid – could face jail over the ‘sex parties’ he has admitted attending around the world.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, whose wife Anne Sinclair is standing by him, has made the extraordinary claim that he was unaware the women at the orgies were prostitutes because ‘they were naked at the time’.
Green Zone. International Zone. The Bubble. To the foreigners still living there, the Iraqi capital’s fortified center has a new name: Ghost Town.
The Iraqi government has taken full control of the former heart of the American occupation. It decides who gets past the 17-foot-tall concrete blast walls encircling the zone.
Israel’s Mossad trained and financed a terrorist group that carried out a series of Hollywood-style assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, unnamed US officials have revealed. Iran, however, believes the CIA was also sponsoring the killings.
Two senior US officials confirmed to NBC that People’s Mujahideen of Iran dissident group (MEK) was to blame for the killing of Iranian scientists. “All your inclinations are correct,” said one of the officials in an interview, while speaking about MEK’s involvement in the assassinations and Israel’s support for the group.
Local media reports claim Israeli 'former military men' also suspected of money laundering, exploitation of minors. Suspects deny allegations: 'We're legit businessmen'
In January 2011, Colombia asked Israel to extradite former Israeli army Lt. Col. Yair Klein, who was convicted by a Colombian court and sentenced in absentia to nearly 11 years in prison for training drug-traffickers' assassins in the late 1980s.
According to an official statement released by Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday this week, the move has been taken on the grounds of defending national sovereignty and “to protect the right of the Venezuelan people to decide the strategic orientation of the social and economic life of the nation”.
On 8 January, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez first announced the intention to leave the ICSID and his government’s refusal to accept the body’s decisions. The comments followed US oil giant Exxon Mobil’s move to bring a case to the body seeking more compensation from Venezuela’s nationalisation of its operations in the Orinoco Oil Belt in 2007.
The U.S. government has informed Israel that it will recommend that Congress approve a three-year extension of loan guarantees to Israel, worth $3.8 billion.
The announcement came after several months of worry in Israel that the loan guarantees would not be extended, despite Israel's request.
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