Daily News Channel
Amid the current media frenzy about Somali pirates, it’s hard not to imagine them as characters in some dystopian Horn of Africa version of Waterworld. We see wily corsairs in ragged clothing swarming out of their elusive mother ships, chewing narcotic khat while thumbing GPS phones and grappling hooks.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country could be proud of two major nuclear accomplishments.
A nonprofit institution that focuses on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons on Monday night released what appears to be satellite images of North Korea’s rocket in flight. The communist nation launched the rocket last weekend in defiance of international opposition
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday he sees no change in U.S. policy toward Iran despite the U.S
President Barack Obama reached out to Iran on Friday — the start of the Iranian New Year — in a video message offering "the promise of a new beginning" that is "grounded in mutual respect." The message is a dramatic shift in tone from that of the Bush administration, which included Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, in an “axis of evil.” It also echoes Obama’s inaugural speech, in which he said to the Muslim world, “we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” In Friday’s video, Obama said: “The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities. And that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.” There was no immediate response from Tehran to Obama’s message, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month that his country would welcome talks with the United States “in a fair atmosphere with mutual respect.” The United States, several European nations and Israel suspect that Tehran has been trying to acquire the capacity to build nuclear weapons, but Iran says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.
Whispers of a split between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his handpicked successor, President Dmitri Medvedev, have grown louder over the past few weeks. The economic crisis is putting pressure on the ruling duo to show they’re on top of things. It may also be exacerbating their differences.
Pope Benedict XVI’s opposition to condoms, even as a weapon to help combat the spread of AIDS, should surprise no one who knows anything about Catholic Church teachings. The 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, penned by Pope Paul VI, explicitly forbids contraception as denying the Creator’s will that humans be fruitful and multiply
Iran likely has enough material to make a nuclear weapon, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told CNN’s John King on Sunday. “We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said on “State of the Union,” when asked whether Iran “might now have enough fissile material to make a bomb.” “Iran having a nuclear weapon, I believe, for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world,” Mullen added.
Researchers announced this week that they’ve found a new gene, ALS6, which is responsible for about 5 percent of hereditary Lou Gehrig’s cases. It’s being called a “momentous discovery” by the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association. Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts and Kings College in London found the mutation by doing detailed sequencing of the genes in several families with an inherited form of ALS.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault turned one on Feb.