El Baradei calls for reforms in Egypt

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=122325§ionid=351020502


The Egyptian former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei has issued a public call for change in Egypt.

ElBaradei, protected by plainclothes security officials, urged about 700 people in a village in northern Egypt on Friday to add their names to a petition calling for reform, reported Reuters.

"Once we gather as many names as possible we will put it forward and bring about real change," ElBaradei said.

The petition seeks constitutional change to make it easier for independents like ElBaradei to run for president after decades of autocratic rule under President Hosni Mubarak. It also aims to revoke the Emergency Law that allows detention without charge and bans anti-government political activity like ElBaradei's outdoor public speech and earlier visit to Mansoura, where up to 1,500 supporters greeted him.

"The state may be a centralized power, but the people are stronger," he told the crowd, part of which had come with him from the nearby provincial capital Mansoura in the Nile Delta.

Returning home after 12 years as head of the Vienna-based IAEA, ElBaradei said that he may run for next year's presidential election.

Mubarak, 81, who returned from Germany on March 27 after gallbladder surgery, has not said whether he plans to run for a sixth six-year term in the election. If he does not, many Egyptians believe he will try to hand power to his son Gamal. Both father and son deny such plans.

Google, NSA alliance posing security threats to users

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=119516§ionid=3510203


A deal between Internet giant Google and the US National Security Agency on cyber-attacks may pose serious threats to other countries' national security and Internet users.

Analysts worry the collaboration would allow Google's data to flow to the spy agency. Journalists and experts have announced their concern over the deal, as the National Security Agency (NSA) is known for intercepting private data.

During the Cold War, NSA worked with companies like Western Union to intercept and read millions of telegrams.

During the so-called US war on terror, the NSA has teamed up with telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on phone calls and Internet traffic.

Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, has become the world's largest Internet search engine.

It runs more than 1 million servers in data centers around the world, processes more than 1 billion search requests and 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day.

IAEA confirms 20% uranium enrichment in Iran

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118942§ionid=351020104


The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that Iran has produced its first batch of 20 percent enriched uranium at the Natanz enrichment plant.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in his first report on Iran that Iranian experts carried out the enrichment for producing nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor between February 9 and 11.

"Iran provided the agency with mass spectrometry results which indicate that enrichment levels of up to 19.8 percent (uranium) were obtained," the report says.

Iran announced on February 9 that it had started enriching uranium to the level of less than 20 percent to meet the country's fuel requirements for the reactor producing medical radioisotopes, after the potential suppliers failed to provide the fuel under a UN deal.

Two days later, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad formally declared that Iran had successfully produced the first stock of the 20-percent enriched uranium, a declaration which was met with cynicism in the West.

The report noted that Iran started enriching uranium to a higher level in the presence of IAEA inspectors.

"On February 10, when the agency inspectors arrived at the PFEP (Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant), they were informed that Iran had already begun to feed the UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) into one cascade the previous evening," Amano said in his report to the IAEA Board of Governors.

The report also verified the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran.

"The information available to the agency is extensive… broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people, and organizations involved," the report said.

However, the IAEA called on Iran to further discuss and cooperate on alleged issues.

"Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," it added.

"Altogether this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," Amano said.

Iran has repeatedly denied it is working on sensitive nuclear materials and insists its uranium enrichment plants and other facilities are only geared toward civilian nuclear energy applications.

Iran informs UN nuclear agency of fuel production

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118172§ionid=351020104


Iran on Monday informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in an official letter that it will begin enriching higher-grade nuclear fuel from Tuesday.

"Today we handed over the letter," said Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali-Asghar Soltanieh. He added that Tehran will use its nuclear stockpile to enrich uranium to up to 20 percent.

The new fuel, to be produced at the Natanz enrichment plant, will supply the Tehran research reactor which produces medical isotopes.

Iran says as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is entitled to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.