Obama says more Iran sanctions coming if talks drag

April 16, 2012

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Cartagena (Colombia), April 16: US President Barack Obama said there would be more sanctions imposed on Iran if there is no breakthrough in nuclear talks with global powers in the coming months, responding to Israeli accusations that Tehran has been given a “freebie.”


At a news conference in Cartagena, Colombia, where he was attending the Summit of the Americas, Obama said negotiations between Iran and six world powers that resumed on Saturday would not stretch on indefinitely and would require Iran to act.


“We're going to keep on seeing if we make progress. Now, the clocking is ticking and I've been very clear to Iran and to our negotiating partners that we're not going to have these talks just drag out in a stalling process,” Obama said. “But so far at least we haven't given away anything.”


Negotiators from Iran and six world powers met on Saturday for the first time in more than a year to discuss concerns about Tehran‘s nuclear programme, which Iran says is for energy and others fear is meant to build an atomic bomb.


The group, which included the United States and the other four permanent UN Security Council members Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany, agreed with Iran to reconvene in Baghdad on May 23.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced irritation that the next talks were in more than a month's time, saying it was critical that Tehran stop enrichment right away.


“My initial impression is that Iran has been given a freebie. It's got five weeks to continue enrichment without any limitation, any inhibition,” he said earlier yesterday.


Over the past year, Israeli and US warnings of military strikes if Iran does not stop working on some aspects of nuclear technology have stoked fear of war, and raised oil prices, in an unsettled Middle East.


Obama, who is up for re-election in November, is unlikely to want to start a military dispute with Iran, especially as he works to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and in the wake of an unpopular war in Iraq.


At the Colombia news conference, Obama said there was still time for talks to ease tensions surrounding Iran.


“We still have a window in which to resolve this conflict diplomatically. That window is closing and Iran needs to take advantage of it,” he said.


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News Network
May 20,2020

Kensington (United States), May 20: The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found.

But with life and heat-trapping gas levels inching back toward normal, the brief pollution break will likely be “a drop in the ocean" when it comes to climate change, scientists said.

In their study of carbon dioxide emissions during the coronavirus pandemic, an international team of scientists calculated that pollution levels are heading back up — and for the year will end up between 4% and 7% lower than 2019 levels.

That's still the biggest annual drop in carbon emissions since World War II.

It'll be 7% if the strictest lockdown rules remain all year long across much of the globe, 4% if they are lifted soon.

For a week in April, the United States cut its carbon dioxide levels by about one-third.

China, the world's biggest emitter of heat-trapping gases, sliced its carbon pollution by nearly a quarter in February, according to a study Tuesday in the journal Nature Climate Change. India and Europe cut emissions by 26% and 27% respectively.

The biggest global drop was from April 4 through 9 when the world was spewing 18.7 million tons (17 million metric tons) of carbon pollution a day less than it was doing on New Year's Day.

Such low global emission levels haven't been recorded since 2006. But if the world returns to its slowly increasing pollution levels next year, the temporary reduction amounts to ''a drop in the ocean," said study lead author Corinne LeQuere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia.

“It's like you have a bath filled with water and you're turning off the tap for 10 seconds," she said.

By April 30, the world carbon pollution levels had grown by 3.3 million tons (3 million metric tons) a day from its low point earlier in the month. Carbon dioxide stays in the air for about a century.

Outside experts praised the study as the most comprehensive yet, saying it shows how much effort is needed to prevent dangerous levels of further global warming.

“That underscores a simple truth: Individual behavior alone ... won't get us there,” Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn't part of the study, said in an email.

“We need fundamental structural change.”

If the world could keep up annual emission cuts like this without a pandemic for a couple decades, there's a decent chance Earth can avoid warming another 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) of warming from now, study authors said. But getting the type of yearly cuts to reach that international goal is unlikely, they said.

If next year returns to 2019 pollution levels, it means the world has only bought about a year's delay in hitting the extra 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) of warming that leaders are trying to avoid, LeQuere said. That level could still occur anywhere from 2050 to 2070, the authors said.

The study was carried out by Global Carbon Project, a consortium of international scientists that produces the authoritative annual estimate of carbon dioxide emissions. They looked at 450 databases showing daily energy use and introduced a measurement scale for pandemic-related societal “confinement” in its estimates.

Nearly half the emission reductions came from less transportation pollution, mostly involving cars and trucks, the authors said. By contrast, the study found that drastic reductions in air travel only accounted for 10% of the overall pollution drop.

In the US, the biggest pollution declines were seen in California and Washington with plunges of more than 40%.

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News Network
May 1,2020

Washington, May 1:The novel coronavirus, that has killed over 230,000 people globally so far and has shattered economies, emerged from a virology lab in the Wuhan city of China, US President Donald Trump claimed Thursday with a high degree of confidence.

"Yes, I have. Yes, I have," Trump told reporters at the East Room of the White House when asked if he has seen anything at this point that gives him a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is where the virus originated.

The president, however, refuse to provide any details, except for saying that investigations are on and it would be out soon.

Asked what gave him a high degree of confidence that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said, "I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that."

The president, however, did not hold his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping responsible for this. "I don't want to say that, I don't want to say that, but certainly it could have been stopped. It came out of China and it could have been stopped and I wish they had stopped it and so does the whole world wish they had stopped it."

Reiterating that this is something that could have been contained at Wuhan ground zero, he said that China could have contained it. "They were either unable to, or they chose not to. And the world has suffered greatly."

One of two things happened, he reasoned. "They either didn't do it and you know they couldn't do it from a competent standpoint or they let it spread and I would say probably it got out of control."

"But there's another case that how come they stopped all of the planes and all of the traffic from going into China, but they didn't stop the planes and the traffic from coming into the United States and from coming into all over Europe," he said, citing the example of Italy, the hardest-hit European country.

"This country (the US) is very lucky and I'm very lucky that I put the ban on China, as you know, very early on. In January, we put the ban on China and that was a very early day. That wasn't a late day, that was an early day. Then, we later put the ban on in Europe," he said.

Before holding them accountable, Trump said he wants to find out what happened. "I think we'll be able to get a very good -- a very powerful definition of exactly what happened. We're working on it strongly now and I think it's going to be very powerful," he said.

"But they could have stopped it. They are a very brilliant nation, scientifically and otherwise. It got loose, let's say, and they could have capped it. They could have stopped it, but they didn't. And they stopped the planes from going to China, but they didn't stop them from going to the rest of the world. What was that all about?” he asked.

"We should have the answer to that in the not-too-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China," Trump said.

When asked if President Xi misled him, Trump said, "Something happened. I don't say misleading or not. I'll let you know that. I mean, I'll be able to give you that answer at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future."

The entire world has suffered as a result of this, he said.

"We have had tremendous death and tremendous sorrow, sadness, and nobody's ever seen anything like it. So, have most of the countries of the world. They've suffered tremendously. It's something that is going to have to be dealt with. We'll have to see," said the president.

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Agencies
July 15,2020

Huawei will be completely removed from the UK's 5G networks by the end of 2027, the UK government announced on Tuesday after a review by the country's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the impact of US sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications giant.

In the lead up to this complete removal of all Huawei kit from UK networks, there will be a total ban on the purchase of any new 5G kit after December 31, 2020.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the UK's National Security Council (NSC) chaired by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in response to new US sanctions against the telecom major imposed in May which removed the firm's access to products which have been built based on US semiconductor technology.

5G will be transformative for our country, but only if we have confidence in the security and resilience of the infrastructure it is built upon, said Oliver Dowden, UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Following US sanctions against Huawei and updated technical advice from our cyber experts, the government has decided it necessary to ban Huawei from our 5G networks. No new kit is to be added from January 2021, and UK 5G networks will be Huawei free by the end of 2027. This decisive move provides the industry with the clarity and certainty it needs to get on with delivering 5G across the UK, he said.

The minister, who laid out the details of the UK's ban on Huawei in the House of Commons, said the government will now seek to legislate with a new Telecoms Security Bill to put in place the powers necessary to implement the tough new telecoms security framework.

By the time of the next election (2024) we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks, said Dowden.

The new law will give the government the national security powers to impose these new controls on high risk vendors and create extensive security duties on network operators to drive up standards, DCMS said.

Technical experts at the NCSC reviewed the consequences of the US sanctions and concluded that Huawei will need to do a major reconfiguration of its supply chain as it will no longer have access to the technology on which it currently relies and there are no alternatives which we have sufficient confidence in.

They found the new restrictions make it impossible to continue to guarantee the security of Huawei equipment in the future.

After a ban on the purchase of new Huawei kit for 5G from next year, the aim is to completely remove the Chinese vendor's influence on 5G networks across the UK by the end of 2027.

The DCMS said Tuesday's decision takes into account the UK's specific national circumstances and how the risks from these sanctions are manifested in the country.

The existing restrictions on Huawei in sensitive and critical parts of the network remain in place, it highlighted.

The DCMS said the US action also affects Huawei products used in the UK's full fibre broadband networks. However, the UK has managed Huawei's presence in the UK's fixed access networks since 2005 and we also need to avoid a situation where broadband operators are reliant on a single supplier for their equipment.

As a result, following security advice from experts, DCMS is advising full fibre operators to transition away from purchasing new Huawei equipment. A technical consultation will determine the transition timetable, but it is expect this period to last no longer than two years.

The government said its new approach strikes the right balance by recognising full fibre's established presence and supporting the connections that the public relies on, while fully addressing the security concerns.

It stressed that its new policy in relation to high risk vendors has not been designed around one company, one country or one threat but as an enduring and flexible policy that will enable the UK to manage the risks to the network, now and in the future.

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