Iran Starts Production of Warship Missile Launchers

TEHRAN – Iran on Monday said the two warships began producing high-speed missile launchers  along the coastline and surrounding sea routes vital Strait Hrmuz. Inauguration of rapid production of ships and Zolfaqar Seraj a day after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated an unmanned bomber aircraft produced in the country, which he referred to would send a “death” to Iran’s enemies. IRNA official news agency announces Seraj (Lights) and Zolfaqar will be produced at the industrial complex naval defense ministry.Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi was inaugurated, said the ships will help strengthen the defense forces of Iran, IRNA said.

“Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s defense industries rely on the army and junk (Revolutionary Guards) is strong and the military, with their full strength, can guarantee security in the Persian Gulf, Oman Sea and the Strait of Hormuz,” said Vahidi.IRNA Zolfaqar is preaching a new generation of ship missile launcher that can be used for patrol and attack operations.

The ship was designed for rapid strikes against ships and equipped with two missile launchers, two machine guns and a computer system for controlling the missiles, “says the news.Fars news agency quoted the statement as saying Zolfaqar Vahidi is equipped with a cruise missile Nasr (Victory) “which has a tremendous destructive power.Iran has previously said Nasr missile can destroy targets up to 3000 tons.

IRNA preach, Seraj, specially designed for tropical climates, also serves as a vessel of war for use in the Caspian Sea, the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and can fire rockets and also used in violent seas,The launch of the productions were done to coincide with the annual activities of a “government week”, a period when the country is usually announced the successful ituh latest technology.

Ahmadinejad, on Sunday inaugurated a small unmanned bomber, a period when the country was generally indicates the success of new technology.Ahmadinejad, on Sunday inaugurated an unmanned bomber aircraft with a cruising range of up to 1.000km he called “the ambassador of death.” State media said the bomber, stable (Striker), can carry four rudat stealth cruise, two bombs each weighing 115kilogram or a sophisticated missile weighing 230 tons.

Tehran claims its military began on Friday when it fired a ground-to-surface missile, named Qiam (Resurrection), and there will be some more announcements in the next few days.The Islamic Republic is also expected to test the third generation missile Fateh (Conqueror) 110, after the exhibit’s version of the missile has a range of 150 to 200kilometer shoot.

Iran recently held four mini-Ghadir submarine built in the DSLAM country, a ship “invisible”, designed to be operated in such shallow peairan Bay.”The latest military activity coincided with warnings against any attack on Iranian territory.

Implacable foe, the United States and Israel, not military action involving Iran’s controversial nuclear program it.Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, where about 40 percent of the oil tanker through those waters in case of a military attack.(AFP)

Rebels killed three personnel of UN peacekeepers from India

Kinshasa  Rebels killed three personnel of UN peacekeepers from India at their camp in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the military said India and the Congo, Wednesday.Besides seven Indian soldiers wounded in attack in Kirumba, the Indian military and local officials accused carried out by the Mai-Mai, a Congolese militia.

“At approximately 1:50 pm local time , under a dark situation, unity Operating Base in Kirumba approached by five civilians,” said the Indian military in a statement.”They asked for assistance in the post, while they’re bericara with guards on duty at the time, a group of about 50-60 pmberontak – possibly from the Mai-mai rebel groups – attacking the base, out of the woods,” the statement said.

The attack lasted about five minutes. Rebels had fled into the woods, in the midst of darkness.”In that incident, three Indian army personnel were killed and seven others injured.General Vainqueur Mayala, commander of military region VIII of the Democratic Republic of Congo says the attack motive is unclear.

“They did not use firearms, but machetes and knives, and they killed three Indian soldiers and three others were seriously wounded,” said the general was told AFP by telephone from Kinshasa.The victims were all serving in the Organization for the Stability in the Democratic Republic of the United Nations (MONUSCO).

MONUSCO is one of institutions and their heightened security so I do not see how the attackers entered the camp were using machetes, “he said and added that he” can not understand “why the attack was carried out.Kirumba located about 140km north of Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu province.

Indian troops shot dead a Nord-Kivu in May this year, and another was killed in a firefight in the province in 2005.Leaders of the city, told the AFP Egide Karafifi that the attackers wore civilian clothes and sang songs Mai-Mai.MONUSCO spokesman, Madodje Maounoubai not be immediately reached to confirm the attack.The mission, which was previously identified natural French acronym MONUC its presence in Congo since the end of 1999 and its new mandate to consolidate peace barlangsung until June 30 next year.(AFP)

Zimbabwe auctioned 900,000 carats of rough gems Wednesday from a diamond

JOHANNESBURG Zimbabwe auctioned 900,000 carats of rough gems Wednesday from a diamond field where human rights groups say soldiers killed 200 people, raped women and enslaved children.It was the first public sale of diamonds from the notorious Marange field in eastern Zimbabwe since international regulators imposed a ban in November under rules designed to screen out conflict gems.The sale happened to coincide with the “blood diamonds” phase of the war crimes trial of Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president. Taylor’s case and the Zimbabwe sale are unrelated, but both point to the successes and difficulties facing the campaign to regulate the trade in diamonds that has helped finance wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Congo and now Ivory Coast.

The auction in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, went ahead after the gems were certified as conflict-free by Abbey Chikane, a monitor for the Kimberley Process that oversees trade in the diamonds. Chikane had established that soldiers were gone from two fenced-off commercial mines producing the diamonds, and that the mines were operating according to “minimum international standards.”

In the rest of the field, where Zimbabwe’s military still holds sway and abuses reportedly continue, a ban on diamonds remains in place. But there is no guarantee its product won’t infiltrate into the legitimately mined stones.The arrangement so angered American gem trader Martin Rapaport that in February he quit as president of the World Diamond Council. “The tragedy of Zimbabwe is that the Kimberley Process has started legitimizing, legalizing, kosherizing blood diamonds,” he said in a telephone interview from Israel as the auction got under way.

He said it made Kimberley participants “liars who are telling the world that these diamonds are legitimate.”The Kimberley Process was set up in 2002. Its members are 75 diamond-producing and diamond-trading countries, along with industry agencies and civic and human rights bodies such as London-based Global Witness.

Stephane Chardon, chairman of the Kimberley monitoring group, said it deserved credit for the original ban on Marange diamonds and for ensuring that the two fenced-off mines were being properly run.He noted that the Kimberley rules apply only to blood diamonds mined and sold by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflicts aimed at toppling legitimate governments. It has no provision for punishing governments.Chardon said the system has helped. “In quite a few countries it has contributed to changing conflict diamonds into development diamonds, in the sense that the revenues are going to the government and are used for development purposes and not for conflict.”

The Marange field was discovered in 2006 and is believed to be the biggest found in the world since the 19th century. It triggered a chaotic diamond rush until police and then the army moved in.Human Rights Watch says the Zimbabwe government still has not kept its word to withdraw soldiers completely from the Marange fields, and that it found conditions there “quite appalling” as recently as May.

“We found that people were still being forced to mine, to dig for diamonds at gunpoint by the army, by soldiers,” said senior researcher Tiseke Kasambala of the area outside the two fenced off mines. “We found children as young as 11 still working in these mines.”Buyers from Belgium, Russia, India, Israel, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates flew into Harare on private aircraft to inspect the stones and present bids in sealed envelopes. They refused to speak to reporters.

“Buyers were extremely interested and the pricing was satisfactory,” said David Castle, director of Mbada Diamonds and chairman of the South African New Reclamation Group that offered the diamonds for sale.Global Witness campaigner Elly Harrowell said that instead of expelling Zimbabwe from the Kimberley process as recommended last year by Kimberley Process investigators who were sent to Marange, “What we have instead is a weak compromise.”

She said that unless Zimbabwe kept its promise to withdraw all troops and fulfill other promised improvements, the Kimberley Process should “act very, very quickly” to prevent Marange gems from being exported.The compromise was reached after a Zimbabwe court released human rights activist Farai Maguwu, who was jailed for more than a month after publicizing abuses at the diamond fields.

Human rights groups say the deal also helped avert a crisis in the international diamond market, since President Robert Mugabe was threatening to sell stones without certification.Zimbabwe’s mines minister, Obert Mpofu, said Wednesday the country has 4.5 million Marange diamonds in stock, valued at up to $1.9 billion – one third of the national debt of a country whose economy has been ruined by corruption, mismanagement and Mugabe’s campaign against the country’s white-minority farmers.(AP)

U.N. Security Council extended the stay of peacekeepers in Sudan's western Darfur region by another year on Friday

The U.N. Security Council extended the stay of peacekeepers in Sudan’s western Darfur region by another year on Friday, telling the force to focus primarily on protecting civilians and aid deliveries.The 15-nation council unanimously approved the extension in a resolution that also condemned a recent upsurge of violence in Darfur and called on Khartoum to stop hindering the work of the joint African Union/U.N. peacekeeping force, or UNAMID.

The force, which currently stands at some 21,700 troops and police, has been struggling for three years with the Darfur crisis, which erupted when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing Khartoum of neglect.The government responded by mobilizing mostly Arab militias accused of a campaign of rape, murder and looting which created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. U.N. officials say up to 300,000 have died, while Khartoum says 10,000.

Extending UNAMID’s mandate until July 31, 2011, the Security Council called on it to give priority to protection of civilians and ensuring “safe, timely and unhindered humanitarian access” to an estimated 2 million refugees.It instructed U.N. officials in Sudan to develop a “comprehensive strategy” to achieve those targets.

Western diplomats said the force should put those goals ahead of reconstruction projects or a direct role in attempts to negotiate a political settlement, which they said UNAMID had been straying into and which Sudan’s government favored.Peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels are going on in Qatar, but have made little progress in the absence of the two main rebel groups.

PERMANENT CEASEFIRE SOUGHT

The renewal of UNAMID’s mandate came as violence has risen in Darfur, a region the size of France. Eight people were reported killed and dozens injured this week at fighting in refugee camps between supporters and opponents of peace talks.UNAMID reported earlier this month that 221 people had died in tribal fighting and other violence in Darfur in June after nearly 600 deaths in May. UNAMID itself has lost 27 troops and police since it first deployed.The Security Council called on all parties to the conflict in Darfur to immediately end the violence and commit themselves to a “sustained and permanent ceasefire.”

The council was to discuss the violence in closed-door consultations later on Friday, diplomats said.The council also urged all parties to let UNAMID do its work and called on Khartoum to carry out promises to the United Nations on flight and equipment clearances and remove all obstacles to the use of the force’s aircraft.

In a report this month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accused both Khartoum and rebel groups of restricting access to areas where there had been fighting. Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem said his government had placed “no restrictions whatsoever” on UNAMID.Aid group Oxfam agreed with the Security Council that UNAMID should focus on security and stay out of reconstruction. “Mixing the work of blue helmets (peacekeepers) with aid groups will confuse Darfuris,” El Fateh Osman, Oxfam’s country director in Sudan, said in a statement.

Separately, U.N. Under-Secretary-General Susana Malcorra told reporters that the United Nations was preparing to expand its presence in semi-autonomous South Sudan to help prepare for next year’s referendum on possible secession for the South.She said U.N. personnel would also help with training of local security forces and monitoring for the referendum.(Reuters)

Malaysian court fined 12 Muslims on Tuesday and sentenced one of them to a week in prison for illegally protesting the construction of a Hindu temple

KUALA LUMPUR, A Malaysian court fined 12 Muslims on Tuesday and sentenced one of them to a week in prison for illegally protesting the construction of a Hindu temple and parading a severed cow’s head.The protest last August stoked tensions among Malaysia’s three main ethnic groups – the Malay Muslim majority and Chinese and Indian minorities, most of them Buddhists, Christians or Hindus who have complained that their religious rights are often sidelined in favor of Islam.

The 12 men were among scores of Muslims who marched with a bloodied cow’s head from a mosque to the central Selangor state chief minister’s office on Aug. 28, 2009 to denounce the state government’s plan to build a Hindu temple in their largely Muslim neighborhood.Some of the protesters also stomped and spat on the head and made fiery speeches that deeply offended Hindus. The cow is the most sacred animal in Hinduism.

All 12 pleaded guilty in a Selangor district court Tuesday to a charge of illegal assembly and were fined 1,000 ringgit ($320) each, said defense lawyer Afifuddin Hafifi. They faced up to a year in prison and a fine for the charge.Two of them who brought and stepped on the cow’s head also pleaded guilty to sedition. Both were fined an additional 3,000 ringgit ($960), and one was sentenced to a week in prison, Afifuddin said.

Sedition, defined as promoting hostility between races, is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine.The conflict highlighted frustrations among minorities about strict government guidelines that restrict the number of non-Muslim places of worship, partly based on whether enough non-Muslims live where a church or temple is to be built.Authorities in Selangor eventually found a new site to build the controversial temple.

A. Vaithilingam, a Malaysian Hindu religious leader, raised concerns that the penalties imposed by the court Tuesday might appear inadequate to some Hindus.”The sentences seem to be very light after the huge commotion and the insult,” he said. The men’s actions “stirred up the emotions throughout the country. This could have caused a riot.”

The protest was among the most high-profile in a string of interfaith disputes in recent years that threatened decades of harmonious ties between Malays, who make up nearly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 28 million people, and ethnic minorities.Early this year, a string of firebomb attacks and vandalism hit mostly non-Muslim places of worship following a court verdict that allowed Christians to use “Allah” in Malay-language publications.Some Muslim Malaysians insist the non-Muslim use of “Allah” would confuse Muslims and tempt them into converting. Minorities say this is an example of institutionalized religious discrimination, but the government denies any bias. (AP)

Telefonica on Saturday pulled out of negotiations to acquire a euro7.15 billion stake in Brazil's leading cell phone company Vivo

MADRID Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica on Saturday pulled out of negotiations to acquire a euro7.15 billion ($9.3 billion) stake in Brazil’s leading cell phone company Vivo. Telefonica said in a statement to Madrid’s stock exchange early Saturday that the deal fell through after Portugal Telecom’s board of directors failed to accept the Spanish company’s offer by the deadline.”The deal has been extinguished,” Telefonica said.Though PT shareholders voted two weeks ago to accept the offer, the Portuguese government used special voting rights to block the sale, citing national interests.The European Union’s Court of Justice then ruled that the Portuguese government’s blocking of the deal was illegal.

Telefonica and PT each own 50 percent of Brasilcel, a Dutch holding company which owns 60 percent of Vivo. The Spanish company’s offer was to buy PT’s half of Brasilcel and following the court’s finding it extended the offer until July 16.Telefonica is eager to expand its significant presence in the fast-growing Latin American sector, where it has an important foothold in burgeoning markets such as Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela and Brazil.

Brazil’s economy is booming, in contrast to Telefonica’s home territory of Spain which is struggling to emerge from nearly two years of recession.PT is Portugal’s largest telecommunications operator and the Portuguese government demanded it maintain a foothold in Brazil as it did not want to lose PT’s Brazilian revenue stream.

Telefonica SA is a much larger company than Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, employing about 237,000 people compared with the around 32,000 employees at its Portuguese counterpart.Telefonica would not comment Saturday on the possibility of legal action following the collapse of the deal.Calls to Portugal Telecom on Saturday went unanswered.Telefonica shares fell 1.55 percent to euro16.16 on Friday while Portugal Telecom directors were still considering the deal. Portugal Telecom shares slid 4.53 percent to euro8.08 per share. (AP)

Seven Cuban political prisoners and members of their families arrived in Madrid on Tuesday

MADRID Seven Cuban political prisoners and members of their families arrived in Madrid on Tuesday, the first of a group of inmates the government in Havana has promised to release, an official said.The prisoners arrived on two flights that left Cuba’s capital Monday night, a Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Together with their families they numbered around 35, the official said.It was the start of a mass liberation of dissidents promised by Cuba – actions once seemed unthinkable.

Cuba says it will free a total of 52 inmates after Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church reached an agreement last week with the government to liberate those still imprisoned from a 2003 crackdown that jailed 75 activists.Spain, which took part in the negotiations, agreed to accept the first group.The Foreign Ministry official was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with ministry regulations.

He said six former inmates – Lester Gonzalez, Omar Ruiz, Antonio Villarreal, Julio Cesar Galvez, Jose Luis Garcia Paneque and Pablo Pacheco – were aboard an Air Europa flight that arrived at 12:49 p.m. (1049 GMT, 7:49 a.m. EDT) at Barajas airport.A seventh released prisoner, identified as Ricardo Gonzalez Alfonso, arrived on an Iberia flight about an hour later.

The seven were expected to come through arrivals together after the second plane landed. It was not immediately known how many of them would speak to the media.”They have come from jail to the plane. I feel a mix of joy and pain because to live in freedom one must leave the country,” said Blanca Reyes, representative in Madrid for the Cuban dissident group Ladies in White, who was at the airport.

One of the released, Omar Ruiz, who had been serving a 12-year sentence for treason, told The Associated Press on Monday he and six other former inmates were driven in a van to Havana’s Jose Marti International airport, where they were reunited with relatives in a special waiting room. All were then escorted to an Air Europa flight bound for Madrid.He said Cuban officials were watching them.”That’s why I won’t consider myself free until I arrive in Spain,” he said.

The government of Raul Castro has pledged to free 52 Cubans who international human rights group say were jailed for their political beliefs. That process is expected to take three or four months and is part of a landmark deal last week between Cuban authorities and the island’s Roman Catholic Church that was brokered by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.Spanish authorities have said that once the Cubans arrive, they will not be required to stay in Spain and will be free to head elsewhere.

The church says another 13 opposition activists and dissidents behind bars will go free soon. It was not known if subsequently released prisoners will be allowed to stay in Cuba or will be forced to go to another country. Both the U.S. and Chile have offered to grant them asylum, in addition to Spain.(AP)

Haiti's president handed out medals to celebrities, aid-group directors and politicians for post-earthquake work

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti’s president handed out medals to celebrities, aid-group directors and politicians for post-earthquake work Monday in a ceremony designed to beat back criticism of an uneven recovery that has left 1.6 million people homeless and destitute six months to the day since the disaster.Just out of sight, baking in the oppressive noonday sun, were the fraying tarps of tens of thousands of homeless who live on the Champ de Mars, once a grassy promenade surrounding the government complex.

“That is just a way to put the people to sleep. But the people are suffering,” Edouard James, a 32-year-old vendor said when he was told of the ceremony. Unable to find a job with his degree in diplomacy, he sells pirated DVDs in a tarp-covered booth.”We are tired of the NGOs … saying we will have a better life and better conditions, and then nothing happens,” he said.Twenty-three honorees – including actor Sean Penn, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission – crossed a podium in front of the crushed, unrepaired national palace to steady applause. Some smiling, some solemn, each received medals and certificates deeming them Knights of the National Order of Honor and Merit.

President Rene Preval, whose successor is to be elected in November, defended the response to the quake. He said in two speeches during the ceremony that hard-to-see successes – like the avoidance of massive disease outbreaks and violence – obviates the perception that not enough has been done.”There are people who did not see all the big efforts that were deployed during the emergency stage: distributing tents, water, food, installing latrines, providing health care during the six months that have just gone by,” Preval said. “It is a major, major task.”The ceremony was resolutely upbeat. The focus was on successes past and plans going forward, with little talk of the 230,000 to 300,000 people killed in the magnitude-7 temblor.

The president and prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, both used the occasion to announce that a six-month emergency phase has ended and that reconstruction has begun.The distinction was lost on some Haitians.”I don’t know if I’m mad or happy,” Anne Bernard, a 24-year-old mother of two living in a metal shack a few hundred yards from the national palace. “All I know is they haven’t done anything.”

The most visible early-emergency programs like massive food distributions have stopped, and there still are few tangible effects of $3.1 billion in humanitarian aid for all but a handful of those left homeless by the quake, who rely on plastic tarps for shelter.Tarp-and-tent camps are growing instead of shrinking. Just 5,657 transitional shelters have been built of a promised 125,000, which even if completed would not be nearly enough for everyone.When building materials finally get through customs, there is nowhere to put them. Fights over land rights, customs delays and systemically slow coordination between aid groups and the government have hampered nearly everything. The Associated Press reported Sunday that the location of the largest of two relocation camps provided by the government was the result of an inside deal.Shortly after the ceremony ended, that camp flooded in a sudden summer squal, with 94 deluxe tents collapsing in the wind and rain.Compounding the problem in the city is that almost no rubble has been cleared. Preval said Monday it would take $1.5 billion to remove all of it.

Meanwhile donors have met 10 percent of a promised $5.3 billion in reconstruction aid – separate from the humanitarian aid – mostly by forgiving debts, not providing cash.Clinton, who also received a medal, said it will be his mission in coming weeks to make sure donors meet their pledges. He acknowledged that more could have been done, but that recovery has so far been faster than the rebuilding of coastal Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami.”To those who say we have not done enough, I think all of us who are working in this area agree this is a harder job (than the tsunami),” Clinton said. “Viewed comparatively I think the Haitian government and the people who are working here have done well in the last six months.”

CNN’s Cooper, who spent parts of January and February in Haiti following the quake and had not returned since, said he found out about the award while getting ready to board his plane to Haiti on Sunday.”I thought a long time about not accepting it. We finally came to the opinion that it was recognition by the country for all journalists,” he told resident reporters after the ceremony. “I don’t think this in any way impacts the desire or willingness to be critical of the government.”(AP)

Thousands of Czechs are protesting plans to place a Michael Jackson statue in Prague.

PRAGUE A group of fans plans to erect a 6-foot column with a bronze bust of the King of Pop in Letna Park, where Jackson held a concert in 1996. They want to unveil it Aug. 29 to mark Jackson’s 52nd birthday.City authorities have approved the project.

By Tuesday, more than 2,000 people had joined a Facebook protest claiming it makes no sense to put the statue in the park because Jackson had no connection with the Czech Republic.A Prague art gallery has proposed putting statue by a Czech contemporary artist there instead.(AP)

Bomb attacks on police patrols in northeastern Colombia, killing at least seven policemen and caused eight others missing

Bogota Bomb attacks on police patrols in northeastern Colombia, killing at least seven policemen and caused eight others missing. The incident took place when Colombia held a second round presidential election.

“We face an unfortunate incident  an attack with explosives against the police patrols which resulted in seven policemen were killed,” said Margarita Silva, an important official in the state of Norte de Santander, Colombia, which borders Venezuela.

He added: “There are eight other people who disappeared and whose fate is known outs.” According to Silva, the attack occurred at around 11:00 local time  when the police patrol tibu traveling from town to the border with Venezuela.Officials did not link the attack with left-wing rebels who have made unstable Colombia for more than four decades.