European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton on Thursday met with Israeli President Shimon Peres who said that Israel’s policy towards construction in Jerusalem should not be changed.
“For 40 years there was a certain pattern which is that we build in the suburbs which are basically Jewish, and we didn’t build in the suburbs which are basically Arabs. That was done by all governments. It was accepted by everybody including, in fact, the Palestinians. It never disturbed the negotiations. I think that we have to continue the same policy,” said Peres.
During their private meeting in Peres’ residence in Jerusalem, Ashton — on a first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since she took office — said the aim of her trip is to support the peace process.

“I’ve come with two purposes in mind: the first is to support the peace process and to ensure that the European Union plays its part in support of that process, and to have the opportunity to discuss the issues of concern with the leadership here and also to have the opportunity to visit some of the projects that we’re supporting.

And my second purpose is to recognise the bilateral relationship, especially economically,” Ashton told Peres.
Ashton’s visit came as tensions between Palestinians and Israel peaked with violent incidents erupting in and around Jerusalem.

Israel angered the Palestinians and touched off a spat with US President Barack Obama’s administration after announcing plans, during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden last week, to build 1,600 homes for Jews near East Jerusalem, in West Bank territory it annexed after a 1967 war.

David Miliband launched 2009 report on human rights in central London.

He said the Foreign Office report ensured that “the most oppressive governments who refuse to be held to account by their own people, they are at least held to account by the international community.”

The report highlighted three issues: the “increasing harassment of defence lawyers; the treatment of detainees in relation to ethnic unrest… and the detention of human rights defenders and political dissidents.”

“A worrying number of people were imprisoned in 2009 for attempting to exercise their right to freedom of expression,” it said. “Officials from the British Embassy in Beijing made repeated efforts to attend the trials of individuals in priority cases but were denied access. “Increasingly, the authorities are using criminal charges to shut down the activities of human rights defenders.”

Miliband said London would continue to push for sanctions against “the most oppressive states such as Burma and Zimbabwe”.

The 192-page report highlighted 22 “countries of concern”: Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Colombia, Cuba, North Korea, the DR Congo, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The report said it had been a “particularly grim year” in Iran while there were “signs of considerable progress” in Iraq.

Rejecting American pressure, Russia announced the planned launch this summer of Iran’s first, Russian-built nuclear power plant.

Russian Premier Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would start up Tehran’s first and only nuclear power plant this summer. Moscow has been helping Iran build the Bushehr facility since 1995, but work has been delayed several times.

The statement of Russian Premier came at a time when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is in Moscow for talks on the Middle East and a stalled US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty. Russia’s foreign minister, gave Mrs Clinton short shrift and argued that making Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant operational would keep Tehran engaged with the international community.

MOSCOW : US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and to join top international diplomats in assessing the stalled Mideast peace process.

Clinton arrived in the Russian capital Thursday morning after an overnight flight from Washington. She is to be joined later by the Obama administration’s special envoy for Mideast peace, George Mitchell.

Clinton aides said she will discuss a range of issues with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR’-gay LAHV’-rahf) on Thursday, including negotiations on a new U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons treaty.

On Friday Clinton will participate in a meeting of the so-called Quartet of Mideast peacemakers, comprising the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union.

India and Russia inked several pacts including on civil nuclear cooperation and supply and joint development of military hardware during a hectic day-long visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to New Delhi on Friday.
Russia will build up to 16 nuclear reactors at three locations in India, Russia’s deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who accompanied Putin, told reporters. Russia is competing with French and American firms for lucrative contracts to build nuclear power plants for energy-hungry India because Asia’s third-largest economy needs to boost its supply to help sustain rapid economic growth.
Setting the tone for Putin’s one-day visit, mainly aimed at keeping one of the world’s biggest arms importers interested in Russian weapons, the erstwhile Cold War allies are also trying to strike an agreement on joint output of the fifth-generation fighter jet. Russia will build more than 1,000 stealth fighter jets within four decades, including at least 200 for its traditional weapons buyer India, the CEO of Russian plane maker Sukhoi, Mikhail Pogosyan, told reporters on the sidelines of Putin’s visit. Pogosyan also said he expected a joint venture with the state-run Indian company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to manufacture around 200 fifth-generation fighter jets.
Russia and India also signed a contract worth 1.5 billion US dollars on Friday for Moscow to supply 29 MiG 29 K fighters, Pogosyan said. Russia would deliver the long-delayed refurbished Gorshkov aircraft carrier to India by the end of 2012, added deputy premier Ivanov on an issue that has troubled relations between the two powers. Putin’s visit is likely to have produced deals worth more than 10 billion USD mainly in defence contracts, nuclear reactors and trade.
Putin denied a deal with Pakistan was on the cards on the lines of the nuclear power pact with India.”Many countries of the world do not have any nuclear technical cooperation with Pakistan because we are concerned for our Indian friend. We sincerely count that our joint work, our efforts to counter-terrorism will produce positive substantial results in benefit of the two countries, he said. The two countries also agreed to strengthen cooperation in hydrocarbons through greater collaboration between oil and gas companies, but did not announce any firm energy deals.

NEW DELHI INDIA : Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in India on Friday where he is slated to sign a series of multibillion-dollar arms deals with Moscow’s old Cold War ally.

According to Russian officials, Putin will sign more than a dozen pacts on Friday worth around 10 billion dollars, including an accord to resolve the troubled sale of a refitted Soviet-era aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov.

Other deals include a contract to sell India 29 MiG fighter jets and an agreement to install additional nuclear power units in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The sale of the Admiral Gorshkov has been marred by a series of price disputes and delayed deliveries, fuelling concerns in Moscow that India could be tempted to end its dependence on Russian military equipment.

Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said the new accord would “suit both sides” and help put the dispute behind them.

“We have an enormous interest in India,” he told reporters ahead of Putin’s arrival in New Delhi late Thursday.

Russia supplies 70 percent of India’s military hardware but in recent years New Delhi has looked to other military suppliers including Israel and the United States.

The strong ties between Moscow and New Delhi date back to the 1950s after the death of Stalin. But India has in recent years also taken care to balance this friendship by fostering closer relations with Washington.

Together with Brazil and China, Russia and India are part of the so-called BRIC grouping of major developing economies seeking to promote a multipolar world economy not dominated by the United States.

At just over 7.5 billion dollars in 2009, trade turnover is minuscule and the two countries aim to increase it to 20 billion dollars by 2015.

According to Indian officials, energy is emerging as a new focus of cooperation between oil and gas rich Russia and energy-starved India which is always on the lookout for new fuel sources to power its growing economy.

Indian fooff Russia’s east coast and was in talks with energy firms Rosneft and Gazprom for more blocks in north Russia.

Latest News Update Sunita Williams:I’ve been very busy with work lately, which is taking me away from blogging. I can’t get myself to sit in front of a computer after a long day of looking at code and scripts.

After the weekend, I was about to write about the achievements of Sunita Williams. Then, came the unexpected news of Lisa Nowak and her diaper story that dominated our TV screens. When I first read the story, I thought to myself, “Oh dear, this can’t be RIGHT.” Then, I thought to myself again, “Wait, that makes NASA astronauts as human as us. Cool. Now I don’t feel bad about not becoming an astronaut.”

This was definitely the last thing NASA needed. Like any family, NASA has its share of people who don’t get along for some reason or another. Like many families, the NASA family keeps up appearances very well. Unfortunately, this weird incident may make it harder for the brightest among us to get into the space program.

Forbes magazine revealed the annual list of the Richest People. Bill Gates is no longer the richest person, Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications billionaire with a net worth of $53.5bn, has been crowned the world’s richest person.
Recovering financial markets and commodities and strong economic growth from some Asian-Pacific and Latin American economies helped to increase the collective wealth of the world’s richest by $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion and the number of billionaires increased from 793 to 1,011. Average net worthrose $500m to $3.5bn.
Mukesh Ambani, chief executive of Reliance Industries, landed the number four spot with $29bn, up from seventh. Lakshmi Mittal, owner of ArcelorMittal, secured the fifth spot with $28.7bn. For the first time, China, with 64 billionaires, is the region with the most members outside of the US, which has 403, followed by Russia with 62.

Russia is willing to back sanctions against Iran so long as they are targeted and do not affect the civilian poupulation, President Dimitri Medvedev said at a news conference with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy.
Speaking in Paris, Medvedev said he hoped that negotiations with Iran would come to an agreement without sanctions. But if we don’t get there, Russia is ready, with its partners, I have already said it, to have sanctions introduced, he said. These sanctions must be carefully weighed and must be sanctions that are intelligent ones. They must not be directed against the civilian population. He said that if sanctions were to be applied, they could not be punitive to the point of preventing further dialogue with the Iranian regime, which says its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. Significantly, Medvedev did not mention Iran in his opening comments, while the question was the first point that Sarkozy made in his. Asked about negotiations under way with the United States to cut nuclear weapons stockpiles, Medvedev said talks were advancing well and that negotiators were down to the fine print, with most substantive issues agreed.

At least 300 people have been killed after a huge earthquake struck the Chilean coast, which triggered a tsunami and sparked warnings for 53 countries.

Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet has declared a “state of catastrophe” following the quake, which measured a significant 8.8 on the Richter scale.

Warnings have been issued for South American nations as well as Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands. The quake shook the Chilean capital Santiago for about a minute and a half in the early hours of the morning and caused some buildings to collapse. In the moments after the quake, people streamed onto the streets of the capital, hugging each other and crying. Several big aftershocks later hit the south-central region, including one with a magnitude of 6.9.

In Santiago, the international airport was forced to close, a highway bridge collapsed and chunks of concrete fell from buildings.

There were also power cuts and phones lines were down in the city, which is about 200 miles away from the quake’s epicentre. That was close to the town of Maule, and happened at a depth of 22 miles at 03:34am (06:34am UK time). Communications were down in the area nearest to the epicentre, which was only 56 miles from the second largest city Concepcion, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said of the quake: “Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated”.