Shorter Question Everything

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: December 1, 2009

Iran
A defiant Iranian government led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed on Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants and also to study a plan to process the material to 20 percent purity, state media reported. The hardline stance — seen as hitting out at world powers led by Washington — came after the conservative-dominated parliament urged the government to reduce ties with the UN atomic watchdog which on Friday condemned Iran for building its second uranium enrichment plant. The UN nuclear watchdog on Friday passed a resolution condemning Iran for secretly building a uranium enrichment plant and demanded the Islamic republic freeze construction of the facility.

Russia
* Russia has assured Iran it will honour a deal to supply the Islamic Republic with advanced S-300 air-defence missiles, Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow said Friday. “We had heard reports that Russia would not deliver these systems to Iran, but we asked the Russian side and they denied it,” Seyed Mahmoud Reza Sajadi told reporters in Moscow. “The delivery deadline has already passed, but the Russian side has cited technical problems which it is working to fix,” he added. “We feel that this question will be resolved in the space of one to two months.” The envoy’s comments came after Iranian officials had accused Moscow of violating its contract and succumbing to growing pressure from the United States and Israel to halt delivery of the missile systems.

* Russia was tonight coming to terms with its most deadly terrorist attack in years after investigators confirmed that a powerful improvised bomb caused Friday’s devastating train crash in which at least 26 people, including several top government officials, were killed. Among the named dead so far were several senior Kremlin bureaucrats, including Boris Yevstratikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Reserve Agency, and Lyudmila Mukhina, a deputy head in the Federal Fishing Agency. A former St Petersburg senator, Sergei Tarasov, also died.

US: Washington
Four police officers were “executed” in a day-time ambush in a coffee shop next to McChord Air Force Base in Washington. The officers, three men and a woman, were wearing bullet proof vests and did not even have time to return fire as the killer, armed with a handgun, unleashed a volley of shots and then fled. The gunman burst into the Forza coffee shop, which is on a side street next to the base in Tacoma, Washington, 40 miles south of Seattle. The victims were working on laptops preparing paperwork ahead of their shifts when the gunman attacked at 8.15 am. Police said the officers were deliberately targeted and the attack was not a robbery that went wrong.