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LONDON: France and Britain said Wednesday they will airlift and ferry some of the thousands of Egyptian refugees stranded at the border between Libya and Tunisia.

The French Foreign Ministry says the operation will involve large airliners and a French Navy ship heading to the region.

It says the operation will allow the evacuation of at least 5,000 people over the course of a week.
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MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's nuclear energy agency says the order to remove fuel from the Russian-built nuclear plant in Iran came because of concerns that metal particles might be contaminating fuel assemblies.

The Saturday announcement that fuel would be unloaded from the Bushehr plant was seen as a setback for Iran's nuclear program and raised questions about whether the mysterious computer worm known as Stuxnet might have caused more damage at the plant than previously acknowledged.

Foreign intelligence reports have said the control systems at Bushehr were penetrated by the malware - malicious software designed to infiltrate computer systems - but Iran has all along maintained that Stuxnet was only found on several laptops belonging to plant employees and didn't affect the facility's control systems.

Some computer experts believe Stuxnet was the work of Israel or the United States, two nations convinced that Iran wants to turn nuclear fuel into weapons-grade uranium.

The Rosatom agency said Monday that damaged elements were found in a cooling pump at the plant, raising the possibility that metal particles could get on the fuel assemblies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters in Geneva on Monday that the decision to remove the fuel was taken because of safety concerns.

"While in the process of the startup we make routine tests and repeat our tests," he said. "Because safety and reliability is our priority in the startup and running of a reactor, therefore we have come to an agreement with the Russians that if there is a case that needs revisiting of the equipment then we better do that in order to make sure that safety and reliability are met," he said.
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Aljazeera reports that by Wednesday morning pro-Qaddafi forces had retaken Gharyan and Sabratha in the northwest, and had tried and failed to take the oil town of Brega in the east. Qaddafi’s jets also bombed arms depots in rebel-held Ajdabiya.

Pro-Qaddafi forces had secured the country’s Western border with Tunisia on Tuesday and then attacked the city of Zawiya, just to the west of the capital. Zawiya’s partisans, joined by defectors from the Libyan army, successfully defended the city. There is said also to have been an attack by Qaddafi’s forces on Misurata (Misrata) to Tripoli’s east.

In other words, Qaddafi still controls only parts of Tripoli, a bit of territory to the far west, and his birthplace of Sirte, and is not proving able to retake lost territory. As it stands, I still think he has lost 90% of the country. But until the Tripoli officer corps decides they cannot win and throw in with the rebels, or until the rebels manage to mount a credible military campaign to take the rest of Libya, it appears things have settled for the moment into a stalemate– though one that overwhelmingly favors the rebels with regard to people-power, despite Qaddafi’s continued military assets (a small military force that is well-equipped and relatively well-trained can sometime trump a big civilian population).

It increasingly appears that outside intervention via the UN or NATO is off the table, and so the end game will likely play out inside Libya and based on Libyan dynamics.

Brent crude oscillated between $112 and $114 a barrel on Tuesday, and West Texas crude hit $100 on Middle East uncertainty, but analysts say that the price would have to stay high for weeks or months to have a serious impact on Western countries’ economic recovery. Prices may in fact stay high for a while, since Saudi Arabia is said to be willing to have Brent crude go as high as $120 before intervening with another increase in its own production.
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Well before the recent wave of Arab revolt swept the Middle East, the region had already witnessed a historic, people-power challenge to a despotic order. In 2009, three million Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran to protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent re-election. His government put down these protests brutally but the scenes of Tehran thronged with millions of protesters seared themselves into the Middle East's consciousness. For an instant, it became tantalisingly clear to the ordinary people of a region paralysed by dictatorship that they could indeed rise up against their autocrats.

It is now Iranians who are watching enviously from the sidelines, inspired by the will of Egyptians and Tunisians to claim their liberty. Twice this past month, tens of thousands of protesters turned out across Iran to chant for an end to the Islamic regime, their hopes for change buoyed by the peaceful uprisings in the neighbourhood. While strict restrictions on journalists inside Iran make it difficult to gauge the scope of the turn-out, the flaring up by Iran's politically disaffected makes it clear that Persian Iran will not be unmoved by the Arab world's tremors.

Iran's hard-line regime crushed last month's protests as swiftly and cruelly as it did those of 2009. When it comes to dealing with a rebellious population, Iran's leaders have more in common with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya than Egypt's Hosni Mubarak: they will not relent without a bloody fight. The oil revenue they have at their fingers buys them shock-troops and the allegiance of a small minority they can use to club dissent
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Beirut - The Shiite movement Hezbollah on Friday reiterated its call for the Lebanese government to stop cooperating with the United Nations tribunal that is investigating the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Hezbollah caused Lebanon's previous government to collapse in January, when its ministers resigned from the cabinet over the issue of the UN tribunal.

The group and its allies then nominated Najib Mikati to replace Saad Hariri - the slain premier's son - as prime minister, but Mikati has been struggling to form a government.

'All operations between Lebanon and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) must be frozen until the formation of a new cabinet that decides on them,' Hezbollah lawmaker Mohammad Raad said at a press conference on Friday.

The STL is due to issue indictments in the Hariri case in the coming
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The Windows computer worm Stuxnet, which targets industrial computer software and equipment, has been unleashed by the United States and Israel’s Mossad onto Iran’s nuclear program, according to a German computer security expert on Thursday.

“My opinion is that the Mossad is involved,” Ralph Langner said while discussing Stuxnet analysis at a TED conference in Long Beach, California. “But, the leading source is not Israel... There is only one leading source, and that is the United States.”

Many experts believed Israel was behind the Stuxnet attacks in Iran, and Tehran has blamed the Jewish state and the US for the killing of two nuclear scientists in November and January.

The malicious code was created to stealthily overtake control of valves and rotors at an Iranian nuclear plant, according to Langner . “The idea behind Stuxnet computer worm is really quite simple … We don't want Iran to get the bomb,” he added.

“It was engineered by people who obviously had inside information,” explained Langner.
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A German security expert has accused Israel and America of managing the release of the Stuxnet worm which could have caused a Chernobyl-like meltdown in Iran's nuclear industry.

Ralph Langner told the TED conference in California that, although his in-depth analysis of the malicious code had led him to the conclusion that Israel's secretive Mossad organisation was involved in the attack, the operation was undoubtedly instigated by the United States.

Stuxnet was specifically designed to attack machinery and computer control systems made by Siemens and installed in Iran's uranium enrichment plants. The worm is said to be capable of making essential centrifuges spin dangerously out of control whilst reporting to operators that they are working at normal levels.

"It's definitely hard-core sabotage," Langner said of Stuxnet. "It's like in the movies where during a heist the security camera is running pre-recorded video showing nothing is wrong."
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Read more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/3/4/stuxnet ... z1FeJJajLU



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RAS JDIR, Tunisia, March 4 (Reuters) - Foreign workers trying to flee the violence in Libya may be trapped or prevented from reaching the Tunisian border, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday after the flow of refugees dried up.

The number of people crossing through this border post two hours' drive west of the Libyan capital Tripoli had topped 100,000 by Thursday but then plummeted.

"The UNHCR is concerned that the security position in Libya is preventing people from leaving," said Firas Kayal, the agency's spokesman on the spot.

The UNHCR also noted reports from journalists escorted to the frontier by Libyan officials in the past 24 hours found it almost deserted, apart from well-armed government troops.

Foreigners have begun fleeing into Algeria as forces loyal to Gaddafi guarded exit routes to Tunisia and Egypt, international aid groups said. Continued...






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Thank You Dutch...I was worried it was just brought to my attention that a thread was started on TB2000 about your health..but seems you are posting here today