Tag: Weekend News Digest

“Everything took place normally and on time,” said Vitaly Lopota, head of Energia, the Russian state-owned company which designs the Soyuz capsule, in televised remarks.

“The crew is feeling excellent,” he added.

The billionaire space tourist and founder of Cirque du Soleil described his journey as a “poetic, social mission.”

The two-hour live One Drop show, broadcast online Friday included guests Al Gore, Bono, Salma Hayek, Peter Gabriel, Shakira, Canadian astronaut Julie Payette and a musical theatrical performance by Laliberte’s circus troupe.

Iran had given the assurance that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors would be given access to the new plant which is being built in a mountain near the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, ElBaradei told a news conference in Tehran.

“There are concerns about Iran’s future intentions and this is not a verification thing,” he said. “We are concerned but we are in no way panicking about Iran’s nuclear programme.”

For a public already inundated with broken-up terror plots, antigovernment sentiment, and partisan pundits ready to use the case for their own ideological ends, the lack of any word from police has led to rampant speculation about why he died.

Mr. Sparkman’s son, Josh, can’t understand why police are reluctant to call it a homicide.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, said the disclosure was a “firm blow” to Western powers opposed to Tehran’s atomic work.

“This site will be under the supervision of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and will have a maximum of five percent (uranium) enrichment capacity,” Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on state television.

The second attack in Pakistan’s northwest city of Peshawar ripped through a crowded area near banks, shops and a wedding hall on a road leading to the army cantonment, hours after a similar attack outside a police station in Bannu.

Ten people were killed in Peshawar and another five on the outskirts of Bannu in a district close to the rugged tribal region of North Waziristan where Washington says Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are plotting attacks on the West.

Obama also denied that “paranoid” Russian objections had dictated his decision to abandon a US missile shield in Eastern Europe and said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seemed “healthy” and in “control” of his impoverished, isolated nation.

The president’s media offensive came a day before he is due to head to New York for his debut United Nations general assembly as president, and the G20 economic crisis summit of developed and developing nations later in the week in Pittsburgh.

He said General Stanley McChrystal completed the document this week, setting out exactly how many U.S. and NATO troops, Afghan security force members and civilians he thinks he needs.

“We’re working with Washington as well as the other NATO participants about how it’s best to submit this,” said the spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, declining to give details of the contents.

The purchase of Lehman’s assets in Asia, Europe and the Middle East transformed Nomura into a top global player and marked a sea change for Japan’s once risk-averse banks, just emerging from their own financial crisis.

What made Nomura’s move almost a year ago all the more remarkable was that it came on the same day that Japan’s top bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group announced it would buy a slice of troubled US giant Morgan Stanley.

Afghanistan is mired in a drawn-out dispute over election fraud that could test the patience of U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western leaders contemplating whether more troops are needed to defend its government.

Attacks took place in all corners of the country, not only in southern and eastern areas that have long been violent but also in the north and west, which had been comparatively quiet until recent weeks.

Although the global economy looks brighter than when the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers met in April, their closing statement said they would not remove economic stimulus until the recovery was well entrenched.

While the timing of these eventual policy reversals may vary, the G20 said for the first time there should be some coordination to avoid adverse international fallout.

The win by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended a half-century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and breaks a deadlock in parliament, ushering in a government that has promised to focus spending on consumers, cut wasteful budget outlays and reduce the power of bureaucrats.

“The people are angry with politics now and the ruling coalition. We felt a great sense of people wanting change for their livelihoods and we fought this election for a change in government,” said Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, 62.