Vienna Philharmonic says Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa has canceled his fall engagements with the renowned orchestra in October and November to recover from cancer

VIENNA The Vienna Philharmonic says Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa has canceled his fall engagements with the renowned orchestra in October and November to recover from cancer.Ozawa, an icon in the classical music world, announced in January that he has esophageal cancer and called off all his concerts between January and June to receive treatment.Philharmonic spokeswoman Yvonne Katzenberger said Friday that Ozawa is following his doctors’ recommendations regarding the fall engagements. She said the concerts in question – slated for Vienna, the Vatican, China and Japan – will take place with another conductor.

Philharmonic Chairman Clemens Hellsberg wished Ozawa well and says the orchestra respects and supports his decision.In Tokyo, the Kyodo news agency reported that Ozawa also has canceled an opera engagement in Japan in August. However, it said he will serve as conductor for the Saito Kinen Orchestra as planned for four days in early September.The Vienna Philharmonic says Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa has canceled his fall engagements with the renowned orchestra in October and November to recover from cancer.Ozawa, an icon in the classical music world, announced in January that he has esophageal cancer and called off all his concerts between January and June to receive treatment.

Philharmonic spokeswoman Yvonne Katzenberger said Friday that Ozawa is following his doctors’ recommendations regarding the fall engagements. She said the concerts in question – slated for Vienna, the Vatican, China and Japan – will take place with another conductor.Philharmonic Chairman Clemens Hellsberg wished Ozawa well and says the orchestra respects and supports his decision.

In Tokyo, the Kyodo news agency reported that Ozawa also has canceled an opera engagement in Japan in August. However, it said he will serve as conductor for the Saito Kinen Orchestra as planned for four days in early September.(AP)

OPEC price hawks like Iran and Venezuela are happy with present prices near $80 a barrel

VIENNA With U.S. demand for oil lackluster, even traditional OPEC price hawks like Iran and Venezuela are happy with present prices near $80 a barrel as they head into Tuesday’s meeting of the 12-nation organization.These two countries traditionally are the greatest advocates of tight OPEC supply. But ahead of their meeting there is informal unanimity among OPEC oil ministers that – with the world’s economic recovery feeble at best and crude prices at preferred levels – it’s best not to rock the boat.

That means the ministers will likely agree to maintain OPEC’s formal production target, now at 26 million barrels a day – a benchmark set over one year ago.OPEC has left its members’ production quotas unchanged since December 2008, when it announced the last of a series of cuts aimed at bringing their output down by 4.2 million barrels per day. The cuts helped engineer a rebound in crude prices, which had collapsed to the low $30s from a mid-2008 high of almost $150 per barrel.

Since the oil ministers last met three months ago, prices mostly have hovered between $70 and $80 a barrel – a range that most OPEC nations have factored into their national budgets this year. That has kept even hardliners Iran and Venezuela on board with other OPEC members.”OPEC should not take any decision to change production,” Iranian oil minister Masoud Mirkazemi told reporters in Tehran on Monday, echoing comments voiced by Rafael Ramirez, his Venezuean counterpart.Still, there will be behind-the-scenes pressure on some members to produce less by honoring their allotted targets.

At close to 27 million barrels a day, OPEC now is producing a daily 600,000 barrels above its official target – a result of cheating by individual nations on their quotas. While OPEC does not reveal which nations are overproducing, the Paris-based International Energy Agency put overall quota compliance within OPEC at only 58 percent in January.World oil demand is expected to rise this year due to surging economic activity in Asian countries, especially China. The IEA, which advises oil-consuming countries, predicts that the world’s appetite for crude will average 86.6 million barrels a day this year, or 1.6 million barrels a day more than 2009’s 86.5 million barrels.Still, oil markets remain concerned about shaky demand in the U.S. Crude consumption there and in other top industrialized nations is expected to contract in 2010 for the fifth consecutive year.(AP)

the IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei criticized Iran for hiding its efforts to build a uranium

The members of the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, is expected to vote Friday on a draft condemning Iran’s nuclear activities, while the Western countries suspect the country is developing nuclear weapons.The diplomats from the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia and China proposed that the draft UN resolution demanding that Iran halt uranium processing building where previously secret and asks Iran confirm that Iran has no other hidden nuclear activities.The IAEA board of commissioners consisting of 35 countries, which met in Vienna on Thursday, is expected to continue to debate and vote on the draft last Friday. If agreed, the draft will be the first act of the IAEA on Iran since 2006.Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, warned on Thursday that Iran would not cooperate with the IAEA if the resolution is approved.In a meeting Thursday, the IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei criticized Iran for hiding its efforts to build a uranium processing near the city of Qom to early September. ElBaradei also said his investigation of allegations that Iran has tried to make nuclear weapons had reached a dead end street, because Tehran does not want to cooperate.