Iran 'ready to attack US bases'. Iranians 'were targeting British High Commission in Kenya'.

Iran 'ready to attack US bases'

Iran declared on Wednesday that it can destroy nearby US military bases and strike Israel within minutes of an attack on the Islamic Republic, reflecting tensions over Iran's suspect nuclear programme.

The elite Revolutionary Guards' military drill included the firing of ballistic missiles Photo: AP

9:56PM BST 04 Jul 2012

The veiled threat came during a military drill that has included the firing of ballistic missiles.

The elite Revolutionary Guards, conducting the war games in Iran's central desert, said that the missiles were aimed at mock-ups of foreign military bases.

Israel and the US have hinted at the possibility of military strikes against Iran if sanctions and diplomacy do not rein in Iran's nuclear development programme. The West suspects Iran may be aiming to build nuclear weapons. Iran insists its programme is for peaceful purposes.

The semiofficial Fars news agency quoted Gen. Ami Ali Hajizadeh of the Revolutionary Guards as saying US bases are in range of Iran's missiles and could be hit in retaliatory strikes. He referred to Israel as "occupied territories."

"Measures have been taken so that we could destroy all these bases in the early minutes of an attack," said Hajizadeh, chief of the Guards' airspace division.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9377297/Iran-ready-to-attack-US-bases.html

Oil Backed Up, Iranians Put It on Idled Ships

By THOMAS ERDBRINK and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Published: July 4, 2012

BANDAR ABBAS, Iran — The hulking tanker Neptune was floating aimlessly this week in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, a fresh coat of black paint barely concealing its true identity as an Iranian ship loaded with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil that no one is willing to buy.

The New York Times

An estimated 65 Iranian tankers are being used to store oil.

The ship’s real name was Iran Astaneh, and it was part of a fleet of about 65 Iranian tankers serving as floating storage facilities for Iranian oil, each one given a nautical makeover to conceal its origin and make a buyer easier to find. The Neptune had been floating there for a month, and local fishermen said there were two even larger tankers anchored nearby.

Iran, faced with increasingly stringent economic sanctions imposed by the international community to force it to abandon any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, has been reluctant to reduce its oil production, fearing that doing so could damage its wells. But Iran has insufficient space to store the crude it cannot sell. So while it furiously works to build storage capacity on shore, it has turned to mothballing at sea.

“We have never seen so many just waiting around,” said Rostam, a fisherman and smuggler who regularly works these waters.

After years of defiance and insistence that sanctions were barely being felt at home, Iranians are acknowledging the latest round with growing alarm. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that they were “the strongest yet.”

International oil experts say Iranian exports have already been cut by at least a quarter since the beginning of the year, costing Iran roughly $10 billion so far in forgone revenues. Many experts say the pain is only beginning, since oil prices have been falling and Iran’s sales should drop even more with the European embargo that went into effect on Sunday.

“They are getting squeezed,” said Sadad Al Husseini, former executive vice president for exploration and development of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. “It’s too much trouble to buy Iranian oil. Why alienate the United States and Europe? And the rest of OPEC is not very happy with Iran either.”

On Wednesday, a Kenyan oil official told Reuters that the country was canceling an agreement to import up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran after Britain warned Kenya that it could run afoul of the sanctions. Meanwhile, South Korea said its imports of Iranian oil fell by nearly 50 percent in May, compared with April.

The drop in crude sales has hit Tehran with multiple challenges. Besides the financial impact, Iran has to figure out what to do with all the oil it continues to produce. Iran is pumping about 2.8 million barrels a day — already down about one million barrels daily since the start of the year. But it is exporting only an estimated 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels a day.

The unsold crude is being stored in what has been estimated to be two-thirds of the Iranian tanker fleet. Most of the ships are sailing in circles around the Persian Gulf as Iran tries to sell the mostly heavy crude at bargain-basement prices.

read more: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/oil-embargo-leads-iran-to-disguise-tankers.html?pagewanted=all

Iranians 'were targeting British High Commission in Kenya'

Two Iranians suspected of planning terror attacks in Kenya toured Nairobi surveying the British High Commission, the Israeli embassy and a synagogue in the week before their arrest, police told The Daily Telegraph.

Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi were arrested last week with 33 pounds of RDX, a powerful explosive, in the coastal city of Mombasa Photo: AP

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/9373798/Iranians-were-targeting-British-High-Commission-in-Kenya.html

Kenya cancels oil deal with Iran after warnings

Published July 04, 2012

Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya –  Kenya on Wednesday cancelled a deal to import Iranian oil hours after the U.S. warned the country that it risked being penalized if it sees through the deal which would breach U.S. and European union sanctions, a government official said.

The sanctions are meant to deprive funding for the Iranian government and what is believed to be an effort by Iran to build nuclear weapons.

Kenya's Energy Permanent Secretary Patrick Nyoike said Kenya had not signed an agreement but had a memorandum of understanding with Iran to import its oil and was complying with international sanctions on Iran.

"There is an embargo on Iranian oil and on that note it has been decided that the M.O.U. will be terminated," Nyoike said.

The U.S. announced in December that it would penalize banks that do oil deals with Iran, giving countries and the oil markets until the end of June to adjust.

A statement from the U.S. State Department said Wednesday that sanctions will be implemented fully, and they include sanctions against financial institutions from any country, without an exception, if they are found to conduct sanctionable transactions, including those with the Central Bank of Iran.

Nyoike had been quoted this week saying that Kenya has signed an agreement to buy millions of barrels of Iranian oil.

He said he was not aware of the U.S. warning to Kenya about oil deals with Iran.

Nyoike said the cancellation of the memorandum with Iran had nothing to do with accusations that two men believed to be agents of a secretive unit in the Iranian armed forces were planning to bomb American, Israeli, British and Saudi Arabian targets.

Kenyan security forces arrested the Iranians on June 19 and were then led to 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of RDX, a powerful explosive that could have been used against multiple targets or concentrated in one large bomb. If used together, the explosives could have leveled a medium-sized hotel, officials told AP.

The two suspects — Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi — appeared in a Kenyan court last week, where Mohammad said he had been interrogated by Israeli agents. Israel's embassy said it had no comment.

In Israel, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the AP that "there are no limits to the Iranian terror."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/07/04/us-warns-kenya-about-deal-with-iran/#ixzz1ziGytJtY

Iran State TV Accuses BBC of Hacking Website

TEHRAN, Iran July 4, 2012 (AP)


Iran's state TV charged Wednesday that the BBC hacked its website to change the results of a poll about Iran's nuclear program. The BBC denied the allegation.


The West suspects Iran may be aiming to produce nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes like energy production. The British broadcaster's Farsi language service reported that the poll showed 63 percent of those who took part favored halting uranium enrichment in exchange for an end to Western economic sanctions. 


The TV report Wednesday said the actual figure was 24 percent, and the rest favored retaliation against the West with measures like closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a key to exporting oil from the Gulf. In a statement, the BBC said the claims were "both ludicrous and completely false, and the BBC Persian Service stands by its reporting." 


 "There is a significant audience within Iran which depends on BBC Persian to provide impartial and trusted news, and we are confident they are familiar with the state media's tactics," it said. The poll was taken off Iran TV's website on Tuesday.


source: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/iran-state-tv-accuses-bbc-hacking-website-16712056

God Particle. Higgs Boson. How Did the Universe Get Created?

REPLACING THE IDEA OF GOD?  OR LEARNING HOW TO PLAY GOD?  WHICH IS THE GOAL HERE?

PARTICLE 'CONSISTENT' WITH HIGGS BOSON DISCOVERED

The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson has been announced by physicists from the Large Hadron Collider's CMS and ATLAS detectors.

The discovery was detailed at a major conference to update the world on the continuing efforts by CERN scientists to find the last remaining piece of the Standard Model that underpins the foundations of our Universe. The Higgs boson mediates the "Higgs field" that ultimately endows all matter with mass -- finding the Higgs is therefore imperative for physicists to understand what gives the Universe substance.

When reports first surfaced that Peter Higgs -- one of the six physicists who, in the 1960s, developed the theory behind Higgs boson -- had been invited to CERN for this morning's announcement, the event became hard to ignore: something historic was about to happen...

This "new boson" revealed itself in the CMS data as a "bump" at 125 GeV/c2, a value that places it at over 130 times more massive than a proton.

After combining all the results gathered over many different channels in the CMS, the level of certainty -- 4.9-sigma -- came tantalizingly close to the "Gold Standard" (5-sigma) for subatomic particle discovery. This means there is a one-in-2 million chance of the result being a random fluctuation, or noise. For all intents and purposes, this is a discovery of a particle that acts very much like a Higgs boson...

However, more work needs to be done to figure out if this is indeed a Higgs boson or some unexpected renegade particle that just acts like the Higgs (although the latter is highly unlikely). Also, if it is a Higgs boson, is it a part of a larger Higgs family of particles?...

"I think we have it," said CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer. "We have discovered a particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson."

SOURCE: http://news.discovery.com/space/higgs-boson-kinda-sorta-discovered-120704.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to the Universe

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: July 4, 2012

ASPEN, Colo. — Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe...

I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, the multinational research center headquartered in Geneva. The agency is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the immense particle accelerator that produced the new data by colliding protons. The findings were announced by two separate teams. Dr. Heuer called the discovery “a historic milestone.”

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-may-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html?pagewanted=all

'God particle' find sets scene for one hell of a row 


Ian Sample
July 5, 2012 - 11:02AM


It was announced less than 24 hours ago, but rows over who deserves credit have already broken out. 


It’s good news for physicists, but a big headache for the Nobel committee. 


The discovery - or near discovery - of the Higgs boson, will see someone win a Nobel prize, but deciding who deserves credit for the work is a minefield. Traditionally, the science Nobel prizes are given to a maximum of three people, whose contributions are judged to be the most important. 

British physicist Peter Higgs congratulates the experiment team after last night's announcment. Photo: Reuters

The rule is archaic in that it harks back to a time when much of science was done by individuals or smaller groups. Two teams of scientists at Cern, amounting to thousands of people, carried out the painstaking work of spotting traces of the particle amid the subatomic debris of more than a thousand trillion collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider. All deserve credit for that effort. 


 But this is the least of the Nobel committee’s problems. The prize is more likely to go to theoretical physicists who worked on the theory almost 50 years ago. Here the parentage becomes more muddled. 


 Six physicists published the theory within four months of each other in 1964. They built on the work of others. 

Physicists applaud the announcement last night in Melbourne. Photo: Angela Wylie

Physicists applaud the announcement last night in Melbourne. Photo: Angela Wylie The first to publish, that August, were Robert Brout and Francois Englert at the Free University of Brussels. Brout died in 2011, and the award cannot be given posthumously. 


Second to publish was Peter Higgs, with two papers on the theory in September and October 1964. In his second, he became the first to mention explicitly that the theory demanded a new particle in nature, which was given the name Higgs boson in 1972. 


Third to publish was a group of three theorists, including two US researchers, Dick Hagen and Gerry Guralnik, and a British physicist, Tom Kibble. Their work was published in November. 


Professor Geoffrey Taylor. Photo: Angela Wylie All three teams worked independently. 


So there are at least five living physicists who can lay claim to the Nobel prize. If the particle discovered at Cern is confirmed to be the Higgs boson, then Higgs is certain to be honoured. That leaves four physicists competing for two places. Englert published first, and would be hard to dismiss. That leaves one place. 


Rows over who deserves credit have already broken out. In 2010, the US physicists complained when the organisers of a conference in Paris on the Higgs particle credited only Higgs, Englert and Brout for the theory. 


The quandary raises a familiar issue for the Nobel committee. Restricting those honoured with a Nobel helps maintain their prestige. But in modern science, few discoveries are born in final form from so few parents.


SOURCE: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/god-particle-find-sets-scene-for-one-hell-of-a-row-20120705-21ike.html

Oil Embargo On Iran. Iranian Missile War Games Begin. Coincidence?

EU Embargo on Iran Oil Takes Effect July 1, 2012, 3:35 p.m. ET By JERRY A. DICOLO ...European Union's full embargo on Iranian oil takes hold. On Sunday, the EU embargo on Iran's oil exports began in earnest, halting the vast majority of imports into Europe... Monday marks the first day of oil trading under the embargo, and the International Energy Agency estimates as much as one million barrels of Iran's crude may leave the market. Oil companies, including French oil major Total SA, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, have already ended their dealings with Tehran to comply with the embargo. Countries outside of Europe are following suit. South Korea last week said it would suspend Iranian imports by July 1. India may also be forced to halt imports as insurance for most of Iran's shipments has been provided by European firms... Earlier this year, concerns about a confrontation between Iran and the West over the Iranian nuclear program helped send oil prices above $105 a barrel on the New York Mercantile... The biggest contributor to oil-market calm has been Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and a rival of Iran in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Khalid Al-Falih, the chief executive of state-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery Co. said in May that the kingdom's output is more than 10 million barrels a day... A demand slump in Europe and economic slowdowns in the U.S. and China have also reduced fears about global supplies... "If demand recovers, you will see the shortage quite quickly," she said. Until the ban's full effects are known, many are bracing for the possibility of renewed tensions with Iran or hiccups in the supply chain...With the new sanctions, the dispute will test past Iranian threats, which included a vow to cut off oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a major chokepoint for global oil supplies... source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303649504577496463851879258.html Iran: IRGC missile war games to begin on Monday

Source: Mehr News Agency, Tehran A three-day missile exercise of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, entitled the Great Prophet 7, will begin on Monday, according to the commander of the Aerospace Force of the IRGC. Photos: Iran Test Fires 14 Missiles - June 2011 "During the war games, long-range, medium-range, and short-range missiles will be used and will be fired from different points across the country at 100 designated targets," Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh told reporters during a press conference in Tehran on Sunday. He also said that domestically manufactured missiles will be fired at bases modeled on airbases of the extra-regional powers, which have been constructed in the heart of the Semnan desert in north central Iran in order to allow experts to assess the precision and efficiency of warheads and missile systems. On the country's latest missile achievements, Hajizadeh said that the domestically designed surface-to-surface Qiam (Uprising) missile has been mass-produced and will be used during the war games. The Persian Gulf anti-ship missile, which has been produced by the Defense Ministry, will also be test-fired during the exercises, he said. During the maneuvers, unmanned aircraft will carry out operations, he added. Shahab 3 test firing in September 2009 Elsewhere in his remarks, he said that the IRGC has designed a new anti-radar ballistic missile, which has a range of 300 kilometers, travels several times faster than the speed of sound, and is able to destroy air defense systems and any base that transmits radar signals. The early warning radar in Turkey, which is part of NATO's missile defense system, the proposed missile defense shield in the Persian Gulf, and Israel's Iron Dome air defense system are vulnerable to the IRGC's new ballistic missile, the commander of the Aerospace Force of the IRGC added. On the sidelines of the press conference, Hajizadeh said that if Israel attacks Iran, it will be obliterated by Iranian missiles. source: http://www.payvand.com/news/12/jul/1005.html Iran Works to Counter EU Oil Embargo Effects By Samuel Rubenfeld Iran is working to offset the effect of a European Union embargo on imports of its crude by bartering with China and selling refined products like gasoline to its neighbors, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The EU embargo, which went into effect Sunday, cuts off oil access for Tehran to the 27 member states, and bars insurance for any tanker carrying Iranian crude anywhere in the world. EU officials re-affirmed last week it would impose the embargo following a review of its effects. If Iran doesn’t succeed in offsetting the sanctions, the Journal report said, Tehran may have to shut down its oil wells, which could damage reservoirs over time and drive up oil prices. The West is ratcheting up sanctions as talks over Iran’s nuclear program, which the EU, Israel and the U.S. say is for military purposes but Tehran says is for civilian use, have failed to resolve the issue. Low-level talks by experts are scheduled for Istanbul this week, though they come after failures recently among high-level officials. “With this decision, our partners in the EU have underscored the seriousness with which the international community views the challenge of Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” the White House said Sunday in a statement. “Iran has an opportunity to pursue substantive negotiations, beginning with expert level talks this week in Istanbul.” Ahead of the embargo, Europe said it was prepared for a dropoff of global supply. The EU measures went into effect just days after U.S. sanctions that punish anyone doing oil business with Iran’s central bank came into force. Iran said it’s ready to deal with the sanctions, according to the Journal report. “All possible options have been planned in government to counter” the sanctions, Iran’s Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi was quoted by the Journal as saying Sunday in comments on the ministry’s website. However, the Journal report also cites the head of National Iranian Oil Co. as saying the EU embargo will cause a 20%-30% reduction in crude exports for the second half of the year. source: http://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/2012/07/02/iran-works-to-counter-eu-oil-embargo-effects/