Applying the Titius-Bode Rule to Exoplanet Systems:
"One of the most well populated and well studied exo-planetary systems is 55 Cancri. In 2008, a paper was published in the Mexican Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics attempting to apply the Titius-Bode rule to this system. In that study, the classical rule could not fit, but, from the five planets known at the time, the researchers were able to fit a similar exponential function to the system. With their fit, they found that, much like our own solar system, there was a “missing planet” for what should be the 5th from the parent star. The fit predicted it should lie at a distance of roughly two AU. However, since the paper was published, the orbital characteristics of the system have been revised significantly, throwing off the predictions of the 2008 study."
'via Blog this'
Monday, February 24, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Young Immigrants Turn Focus to President in Struggle Over Deportations
PHOENIX — More than 500 leaders of a national network of young immigrants, frustrated that House Republicans said they would not move on immigration this year, have decided to turn their protests on President Obama in an effort to pressure him to act unilaterally to stop deportations.
After months of lobbying, rallies and sit-in demonstrations ended with no movement in the House on a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally, the youths who gathered in Phoenix this weekend for an annual congress of the network, United We Dream, said they felt disappointed by Republicans and Democrats. Pointing to Mr. Obama’s pledge early this year to use his phone and pen when Congress did not move on his agenda, they said they would demand that he take executive action to increase protections for immigrants without papers.
“The community we work with is telling us that these deportations are ripping our families apart; this has to stop,” said Cristina Jiménez, the managing director of the network, the largest organization of immigrants who grew up in this country without legal status after coming as children and who call themselves Dreamers. “And we know the president has the power to do it.”
The young immigrants’ demands will be uncomfortable for Mr. Obama in a midterm election year when his low approval ratings could allow Republicans to make important gains. Polls show wider sympathy among Americans for young immigrants than for others without legal status, and the young people have often been leaders in setting strategy among immigrant groups.
The youths said they would press the president to expand thedeportation deferrals he provided to them by executive action in 2012. More than 520,000 young people have received deferrals so far, allowing them to work legally and obtain driver’s licenses in many states. The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, has been very popular among Latino and immigrant voters, and Mr. Obama has cited it as an example of his commitment to overhaul the immigration system.
With their shift to concentrate on Mr. Obama, the youths are sharply scaling back their expectations. Last year, after a comprehensive immigration bill passed the Senate, they hoped the House would follow through and also open a direct pathway to citizenship for most of 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the country.
This month, House Republican leaders offered principles on immigration, including legalization but not citizenship for most of those immigrants. But days later, Speaker John A. Boehner said his caucus was not ready to move forward on the divisive issue this year.
Lorella Praeli, a leader of the youth network, told the gathering here that Republicans had adopted a strategy of “death by delay” for immigration. But network leaders did not appear disheartened. An organization that only a few years ago held its meetings clandestinely to avoid detection by immigration authorities, the network held its congress this year in the Sheraton hotel in downtown Phoenix. They filled the main ballroom with strategy debates, protest singalongs and group hugs. Other guests were surprised to encounter slogan-chanting youths parading through the lobby.
They chose Phoenix, leaders said, to confront Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, who has not allowed youths with deportation deferrals to apply for driver’s licenses, as other states have.
On Saturday afternoon, the group marched through downtown Phoenix and rallied at a Department of Homeland Security detention center. Their chants were mainly directed toward the president. “Obama, Obama, don’t deport my mama!” the crowd members shouted.
In Washington, a perception gap has emerged over enforcement, with House Republicans arguing that Mr. Obama has been lax on illegal immigration and border security, so they cannot trust him to enforce any new law. Administration officials counter with figures showing Mr. Obama has deported more than 1.9 million foreigners, a record for an American president.
The youths here said they had no doubts about the impact of the Obama administration’s deportation policies, because their families felt they were under siege from immigration authorities.
“We can’t wait for Washington to continue playing around with our lives,” said Julieta Garibay, another network leader. “Our people see deportations every single day. They say, ‘Maybe this might be the last day I get to see my mom because she might get deported tomorrow.’ We’re fed up with that.”
The youths said they would ask Mr. Obama to cut back programs that have greatly expanded the local reach of federal immigration authorities and to grant deportation deferrals to undocumented parents of youths who had received them.
The president has insisted he does not have legal authority to grant more deferrals. But recently he hinted that he might revisit that position if legislation remained stalled.
In spite of the inertia in Washington, the youths, who represented 50 organizations in 25 states, said their ranks grew rapidly last year as measures to expand opportunities for them advanced in many states. At least 18 states now allow foreign-born students without legal residency to pay in-state tuition rates.
The youths said they were not giving up entirely on legislation efforts and planned drives in several districts in Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas to register and mobilize Latino voters against Republicans who have resisted legalization.
Kerry Says Venezuela Crackdown Is ‘Unacceptable’ - NYTimes.com
Kerry Says Venezuela Crackdown Is ‘Unacceptable’ - NYTimes.com:
"“This is terrorism,” he said. “Fascist, spoiled, rich kids!”"
-------------- Mr. Maduro President of Venezuela.
'via Blog this'
"“This is terrorism,” he said. “Fascist, spoiled, rich kids!”"
-------------- Mr. Maduro President of Venezuela.
'via Blog this'
El Chapo, Most-Wanted Drug Lord, Is Captured in Mexico - NYTimes.com
El Chapo, Most-Wanted Drug Lord, Is Captured in Mexico - NYTimes.com:
"MEXICO CITY — Just before 7 a.m. on Saturday, dozens of soldiers and police officers descended on a condominium tower in Mazatlán, Mexico, a beach resort known as much as a hangout for drug traffickers as for its seafood and surf."
'via Blog this'
"MEXICO CITY — Just before 7 a.m. on Saturday, dozens of soldiers and police officers descended on a condominium tower in Mazatlán, Mexico, a beach resort known as much as a hangout for drug traffickers as for its seafood and surf."
'via Blog this'
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Fateful Day
Today Kiev had a change of government, and Mexico ended one terrible era. My reflections here have a level of certainty, I will say above 50%. A few years ago I saw the Libyan Government collapse, and believed that that country still had many years of struggle to achieve something close to the progress of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, say. I was right, Libya is still in turmoil, just think of Benghazi. The whole Arab Spring is up in the air, the way I see it. To begin with, it is difficult to know if there is progress in the Universe. The standard Big Bang model, does not address progress. There was a beginning, around fourteen billion years ago, and now we believe there won't be a collapse; instead we expect a constant accelerated motion going forward. Stars are born and die, as well as galaxies. We do not see a Confederation of Planets getting better and better organized, just our little blue planet, completely isolated up to now. All that Darwin's evolutionary idea postulates, is that as time passes, some living creatures stay and, some disappear. Besides the almost tautological description of the survival of the fittest, I do not know which species to bet on.
Then, is Mexico entering a New Era, and Ukraine joining the Democratic West?
Today's events can be seen in the general context of a stubborn global recession. Mexico is in NAFTA, and it will remain in this economic zone, for many years to come. If I had money I'll put it there, and not in Libya. Stratford just released an immediate reaction to its clients, regarding these Mexican events, predicting violence there, until the drug lords find their equilibrium points. My prognosis is different.
I have little to say on Ukraine, I'm not from there.
Today was a fateful day for Mexico. I expect tons of money to develop oil reserves in that country. The way I see it, the main obstacle to that development, were Mr. Joaquin Guzman Loera's, a.k.a. El Chapo, armies of corruption, that metastasized, like cancer, in the Mexican Body politic.
Today Mexico got a shot, of strong medicine.
I wish them well.
Behind Gates, Bizarre Vision of Opulence
A Glimpse Into the Ukrainian President’s Life
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
KIEV, Ukraine — An eerie calm and a light mist shrouded President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s sprawling residential compound just outside the capital on Saturday morning as street fighters from the center of Kiev made their way inside, gingerly passing a wrought-iron gate and cautioning one another about booby traps and snipers.
They found none of either but discovered instead a world surely just as surreal as the charred wasteland of barricades and debris on the occupied central plaza that has been their home for months. It was a vista of bizarre and whimsical attractions on a grand scale, a panorama of waste and inexplicable taste.
They saw about a half-dozen large residences of various styles, a private zoo with rare breeds of goats, a coop for pheasants from Asia, a golf course, a garage filled with classic cars and a private restaurant in the form of a pirate ship, with the name “Galleon” on the stern.
One man in the 31st Lviv Hundred, the small band of antigovernment militants that took control of the compound, hung a Ukrainian flag on a lamp post. A few dozen others walked about, seemingly dazed by what was happening. Some raised their clubs, pipes and bats into the air and yelled, “Glory to Ukraine!” and “Glory to its heroes!”
Whether it was the toppling of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines or of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, the breaching of the presidential palace gates is a milestone of a revolution. But Kiev on Saturday was unusual in one sense. There was no sacking. The opposition unit that took control of the president’s complex, called Mezhigorye, kept it intact, at least for now. On Saturday, the president fled, and the presidential guard melted away. But members of the Lviv-based “hundred,” who had repeatedly confronted Mr. Yanukovych’s security forces on the streets, posted guards around his residential compound and prevented looting even as swarms of gawking Kiev residents strolled through its grounds.
The reason, the street fighters said, was to preserve evidence of the ousted leader’s lavish lifestyle for his prosecution.
One of the Lviv militants walked onto a gazebo ringed with plaster urns, removed his green military helmet and gazed out at the park and the Dnieper River.
Another pair, wearing fetid, soot-smeared clothing from the square and carrying baseball bats, walked into an outbuilding, sat in chairs with plush blue and gold upholstery, pulled large yellow drinking glasses from a cabinet and began to photograph one another on their cellphones as if raising toasts.
“We hoped for this but didn’t expect it,” said one, Roman Dakus. Mr. Dakus had been in Kiev at Independence Square, or Maidan as it is known here, off and on for three months, he said. “It was very, very difficult to stay on the square in the cold at night. But we warmed one another with our hearts and our souls.
“People really changed their mind-set because of these events,” Mr. Dakus added. “Before, people thought, ‘Nothing really depends on me.’ They preferred to say that and to think like that. But after this situation, they think differently. They believe in their struggle when they are all together.”
Within a short time, a crowd gathered outside the gates. The street fighters threw them open, and Ukrainians, who were arriving by the thousands by early afternoon, flowed into the compound. “What a nightmare,” one man said in disgust, looking at the dining room of Mr. Yanukovych’s pirate ship, moored at the river bank, all oak and brass trim.
The complex was once a modest government site that Mr. Yanukovych turned into a private residence and then expanded, saying acquaintances had built or paid for many amenities. Previous Ukrainian presidents had not lived at the residence.
The street fighters decided not to open the buildings, saying they would wait for prosecutors and experts on valuable art to arrive and assess their contents.
Autocrats seem to have a propensity for private zoos, and Mr. Yanukovych’s palace complex contained multiple enclosures for exotic animals. Rare pheasants with magnificent, iridescent red tails scratched about in their cages, nervous from the crowds walking past and snapping pictures. The labels on the cages identified them as “Diamond pheasant” and “Japanese long-tailed pheasant.”
Other cages held dogs, and there were pens for goats and what appeared to be rare breeds of pigs.
The street fighters also found a heap of ash from burned documents, and used a raft to fish others from where they had been thrown into the river, laying them out carefully to dry.
The complex extended well over a mile along the river and was immaculately landscaped with hedges, lawns and birch trees, and a golf course of graceful swales, sand traps and pools of crystalline water.
Even as the crowds grew, there was no sign of looting. By evening, a vast traffic jam formed on the highway from the capital, and crowds walked along the road’s shoulder to see the open palace. The grounds filled with Ukrainian citizens, awed by what they saw. “I’ve never seen luxury like this,” said one man.
Speaking of Mr. Yanukovych, Ihor Knyazov, a cook, said: “He couldn’t stand up and tell the people, ‘I give up.’ So he just ran away, the coward.”
“It’s beautiful here,” said Svetlana Gorbenkova, a realtor, as she walked about. “It’s so peaceful. But why all this for just one person? This was all stolen from us. It’s obvious now how much he stole. Why didn’t he give anything to the people? When he was running for president, one of his slogans was, ‘I will listen to every one of you.’ But he didn’t listen to any of us.”
Friday, February 21, 2014
Turbulent Black Holes
Recently it has been suggested that chaotic behavior in the vicinity of the black hole singularity may be responsible for the information loss in the black hole information paradox [31]. Our work indicates that complicated behavior arises in a transitory way outside of the event horizon if the gravitational Reynolds number is high enough.
arXiv
arXiv
[1402.4859] Turbulent Black Holes
[1402.4859] Turbulent Black Holes:
"We show that rapidly-spinning black holes can display turbulent gravitational behavior which is mediated by a new type of parametric instability. This instability transfers energy from higher temporal and azimuthal spatial frequencies to lower frequencies--- a phenomenon reminiscent of the inverse energy cascade displayed by 2+1-dimensional turbulent fluids. Our finding reveals a path towards gravitational turbulence for perturbations of rapidly-spinning black holes, and provides the first evidence for gravitational turbulence in an asymptotically flat spacetime. Interestingly, this finding predicts observable gravitational wave signatures from such phenomena in black hole binaries with high spins and gives a gravitational description of turbulence relevant to the fluid-gravity duality."
'via Blog this'
"We show that rapidly-spinning black holes can display turbulent gravitational behavior which is mediated by a new type of parametric instability. This instability transfers energy from higher temporal and azimuthal spatial frequencies to lower frequencies--- a phenomenon reminiscent of the inverse energy cascade displayed by 2+1-dimensional turbulent fluids. Our finding reveals a path towards gravitational turbulence for perturbations of rapidly-spinning black holes, and provides the first evidence for gravitational turbulence in an asymptotically flat spacetime. Interestingly, this finding predicts observable gravitational wave signatures from such phenomena in black hole binaries with high spins and gives a gravitational description of turbulence relevant to the fluid-gravity duality."
'via Blog this'
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Sochi Under Siege
SOCHI, Russia — ON Feb. 7, the opening day of the Olympics, several people walked out onto Red Square in Moscow. When they attempted to sing the Russian national anthem, all were arrested and taken to the nearest police station. “We were holding small rainbow flags to show support for the L.G.B.T. community,” wrote my protester friend, who found herself taken into custody for the first time in her life.
The following day, the police arrested a group that had gathered in Manezhnaya Square, in Moscow. The arrests came immediately after about 60 people unfurled umbrellas in support of Russia’s only independent television channel, Dozhd. The channel was recently dropped by all major cable operators under pressure from the government, which appeared to have been exacting revenge for a viewer poll question it didn’t like.
The question was: “Would it have been better to surrender Leningrad to the Nazis during World War II in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives?” One question — deemed “unpatriotic” — and the channel is on the verge of closing. Simply because President Vladimir V. Putin knows best how one should love one’s country.
This week in Sochi, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, another member of Pussy Riot, and I were detained three times and then, on Wednesday, assaulted by Cossack militiamen with whips and pepper spray. Mr. Putin will teach you how to love the motherland.
More than $50 billion was sunk into the construction of Olympic venues — giant, meaningless, alien objects whose purpose is to feed the ego of the country’s president, elevating him to the rank of a pharaoh or emperor. The host city of Sochi has essentially become a closed military facility. Access to the city is restricted and will remain so for another month after the Olympics end.
Environmentalists’ concerns about illegal construction, enabled by corrupt business dealings, are well founded. Mr. Putin has turned the wartime siege of Leningrad into a sacrosanct event, all while imposing a new siege on Sochi.
Can a pharaoh shut down a city, can he declare a blockade in time of peace? Yes, if he lives and rules in Russia. This is how Dozhd came to be denounced by the government — for posing a question about a siege during a siege.
The face of these Olympics is deceptive, as is the entire authoritarian regime. At first, the authorities do not strike out at you directly. Rather, they systematically force you to adopt the only stance they deem proper, which is to move passively, apolitically, through the entire chain of post-Soviet institutions, from primary school to the grave.
Nikolai Zabolotsky, a Russian avant-garde poet who was repressed under Stalin and spent eight years in exile, compared progressing through life’s stages to being transferred through the gulag’s series of transit prisons. The realities of the Stalin era made the voicing of a direct metaphor like this necessary, even at the cost of losing one’s freedom.
The reality of contemporary Russia, and Mr. Putin’s goal, is to kill such metaphors — by force, if necessary — and to kill the reflection, analysis and criticism they carry. The quasi-fascist direction of this regime over the past 13 years depends on this deadening of the intellect. For as soon as obliviousness ends, so does Mr. Putin’s power.
Those who are writing about the Olympics and who are currently present at the Games should not fall into this forgetfulness, because it is fatal. When you talk about the Olympics — whether you like it or not — you are talking about Russia. For this is a country where people are arrested for waving umbrellas and little flags, where they are sent to penal colonies, like the environmental activist Yevgeny Vitishko, for writing a slogan like “the forest is for everybody” on a governor’s fence, and where they may be sentenced to five or six years in prison for voicing their dissent against the status quo.
Because of their dissent, the most honest people in our country are currently in jail as defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case. They came to the Moscow square on May 6, 2012, to join a protest against fraud in the presidential elections, and they chanted, “Putin, get out!” They were beaten with truncheons by riot police officers, arrested, jailed and put on trial.
For the past year and a half, they have had to make repeated appearances in a kangaroo court, where, day after day, they are being silently tortured as part of Mr. Putin’s broader policy. On Feb. 5, they made their final pleas; their verdicts are due on Feb. 21.
This story is bigger than the Olympic venues, bigger even than the Olympics. This is a story about the real Russia of today. It exists, and the price of its existence is prison sentences for innocent people who speak out.
[1311.2603] Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts
[1311.2603] Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts:
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) display a bimodal duration distribution, with a separation between the short- and long-duration bursts at about 2 sec. The progenitors of long GRBs have been identified as massive stars based on their association with Type Ic core-collapse supernovae, their exclusive location in star-forming galaxies, and their strong correlation with bright ultraviolet regions within their host galaxies. Short GRBs have long been suspected on theoretical grounds to arise from compact object binary mergers (NS-NS or NS-BH). The discovery of short GRB afterglows in 2005, provided the first insight into their energy scale and environments, established a cosmological origin, a mix of host galaxy types, and an absence of associated supernovae. In this review I summarize nearly a decade of short GRB afterglow and host galaxy observations, and use this information to shed light on the nature and properties of their progenitors, the energy scale and collimation of the relativistic outflow, and the properties of the circumburst environments. The preponderance of the evidence points to compact object binary progenitors, although some open questions remain. Based on this association, observations of short GRBs and their afterglows can shed light on the on- and off-axis electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave sources from the Advanced LIGO/Virgo experiments.
'via Blog this'
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) display a bimodal duration distribution, with a separation between the short- and long-duration bursts at about 2 sec. The progenitors of long GRBs have been identified as massive stars based on their association with Type Ic core-collapse supernovae, their exclusive location in star-forming galaxies, and their strong correlation with bright ultraviolet regions within their host galaxies. Short GRBs have long been suspected on theoretical grounds to arise from compact object binary mergers (NS-NS or NS-BH). The discovery of short GRB afterglows in 2005, provided the first insight into their energy scale and environments, established a cosmological origin, a mix of host galaxy types, and an absence of associated supernovae. In this review I summarize nearly a decade of short GRB afterglow and host galaxy observations, and use this information to shed light on the nature and properties of their progenitors, the energy scale and collimation of the relativistic outflow, and the properties of the circumburst environments. The preponderance of the evidence points to compact object binary progenitors, although some open questions remain. Based on this association, observations of short GRBs and their afterglows can shed light on the on- and off-axis electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave sources from the Advanced LIGO/Virgo experiments.
'via Blog this'
[1402.4803] Red or blue? A potential kilonova imprint of the delay until black hole formation following a neutron star merger
[1402.4803] Red or blue? A potential kilonova imprint of the delay until black hole formation following a neutron star merger:
Mergers of binary neutron stars (NSs) usually result in the formation of a hypermassive neutron star (HMNS). Whether- and when this remnant collapses to a black hole (BH) depends primarily on the equation of state and on angular momentum transport processes, both of which are uncertain. Here we show that the lifetime of the merger remnant may be directly imprinted in the radioactively powered kilonova emission following the merger. We employ axisymmetric, time-dependent hydrodynamic simulations of remnant accretion disks orbiting a HMNS of variable lifetime, and characterize the effect of this delay to BH formation on the disk wind ejecta. Our models follow the system evolution over several seconds, and include the effect of nuclear recombination, viscous heating, and neutrino irradiation by both the HMNS and the disk. When BH formation is relatively prompt (< 100 ms), outflows from the disk are sufficiently neutron rich to form heavy r-process elements with mass number A > 140, resulting in ~week-long emission with a spectral peak in the near-infrared (NIR), similar to that produced by the dynamical ejecta. In contrast, delayed BH formation allows neutrinos from the HMNS to raise the electron fraction in the polar direction to values such that potentially Lanthanide-free outflows (A < 140) are generated. The lower opacity would produce a brighter, bluer, and shorter-lived ~day-long emission (a `blue bump') prior to the late NIR peak from the dynamical ejecta and equatorial wind. A long-lived HMNS also increases the ejecta mass significantly compared to the prompt BH case. Our work motivates efforts to obtain early (~day) optical follow-up of mergers detected by Advanced LIGO/Virgo. This new diagnostic of BH formation should be useful for events with a signal to noise lower than that required for direct detection of gravitational waveform signatures.
'via Blog this'
Mergers of binary neutron stars (NSs) usually result in the formation of a hypermassive neutron star (HMNS). Whether- and when this remnant collapses to a black hole (BH) depends primarily on the equation of state and on angular momentum transport processes, both of which are uncertain. Here we show that the lifetime of the merger remnant may be directly imprinted in the radioactively powered kilonova emission following the merger. We employ axisymmetric, time-dependent hydrodynamic simulations of remnant accretion disks orbiting a HMNS of variable lifetime, and characterize the effect of this delay to BH formation on the disk wind ejecta. Our models follow the system evolution over several seconds, and include the effect of nuclear recombination, viscous heating, and neutrino irradiation by both the HMNS and the disk. When BH formation is relatively prompt (< 100 ms), outflows from the disk are sufficiently neutron rich to form heavy r-process elements with mass number A > 140, resulting in ~week-long emission with a spectral peak in the near-infrared (NIR), similar to that produced by the dynamical ejecta. In contrast, delayed BH formation allows neutrinos from the HMNS to raise the electron fraction in the polar direction to values such that potentially Lanthanide-free outflows (A < 140) are generated. The lower opacity would produce a brighter, bluer, and shorter-lived ~day-long emission (a `blue bump') prior to the late NIR peak from the dynamical ejecta and equatorial wind. A long-lived HMNS also increases the ejecta mass significantly compared to the prompt BH case. Our work motivates efforts to obtain early (~day) optical follow-up of mergers detected by Advanced LIGO/Virgo. This new diagnostic of BH formation should be useful for events with a signal to noise lower than that required for direct detection of gravitational waveform signatures.
'via Blog this'
The Stimulus Tragedy - NYTimes.com
The Stimulus Tragedy - NYTimes.com:
"Five years have passed since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the “stimulus” — into law. With the passage of time, it has become clear that the act did a vast amount of good. It helped end the economy’s plunge; it created or saved millions of jobs; it left behind an important legacy of public and private investment."
'via Blog this'
"Five years have passed since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the “stimulus” — into law. With the passage of time, it has become clear that the act did a vast amount of good. It helped end the economy’s plunge; it created or saved millions of jobs; it left behind an important legacy of public and private investment."
'via Blog this'
Russian Is Surprise Winner in Women’s Figure Skating - NYTimes.com
Russian Is Surprise Winner in Women’s Figure Skating - NYTimes.com:
"SOCHI, Russia — Many expected a Russian to contend for a gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Sochi Games, but hardly anyone expected that it would be Adelina Sotnikova."
'via Blog this'
"SOCHI, Russia — Many expected a Russian to contend for a gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Sochi Games, but hardly anyone expected that it would be Adelina Sotnikova."
'via Blog this'
Путин научит тебя любить Родину
These girls are fearless. My daughter is from Russian stock also, and I can tell you, it is not that easy to be with her, as I see myself, as a loving and caring father.
I feel sorry for Putin.
But he deserves it, and this is the only way I can see Russia becoming part of the Democratic West.
I feel sorry for Putin.
But he deserves it, and this is the only way I can see Russia becoming part of the Democratic West.
Iran and World Powers Agree on Framework for Nuclear Talks
VIENNA — In what officials described as a serious, workmanlike and conversational atmosphere, Iran and six world powers have agreed on a timetable and framework for negotiating a comprehensive agreement to end the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and Iran’s foreign minister said on Thursday.
While details were vague and the two delegation leaders declined to take any questions at a closing news conference, they said that groups of experts would meet early in March and that the full delegations would meet here again on March 17, with the expectation that they will meet monthly.
Catherine Ashton, the European Union official, said in brief remarks: “We had three very productive days during which we have identified all the issues we need to address to reach a comprehensive and final agreement. There is a lot to do, it won’t be easy, but we have made a good start.”
Officials refused to describe the topics for the expert meetings, but a senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under the session’s ground rules, said, “Every issue of concern to us is on the table,” including uranium enrichment, Iran’s heavy-water reactor project and its suspected nuclear military research and ballistic missile program. All these issues, the official said, including clarifying the issue of Iran’s past military research, are at least mentioned in a joint plan of action agreed upon with Iran in November in Geneva.
“All our concerns must be met to get an agreement,” said the American official, defining Washington’s goals as ensuring that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon and that world powers can be confident that Iran’s nuclear program has no military aspect or intent, as Iran maintains.
The care that officials on all sides took not to say anything very specific was striking, as was the positive atmosphere they described in the meetings themselves, which were said by one official to have no element of political rhetoric or posturing, even over “areas of difficulty.” It was clear that neither side wanted any note of failure in this first round of talks on a comprehensive deal, but it was also clear that most of the work here was about setting an agenda and establishing the priority of the issues at stake, without entering into a substantive discussion of those issues.
Iranian officials have said publicly that only their nuclear program is on the agenda, not their larger military structure, and that they will not “dismantle” any part of their nuclear program or give up what they have called their right to modernize it. American officials have emphasized that large parts of Iran’s “nuclear infrastructure” will have to be dismantled, as opposed to simply disabled, as part of a final deal.
A temporary six-month deal to essentially freeze Iran’s program in return for modest relief from sanctions and the release of some frozen assets expires on July 20. The officials said they had planned meetings throughout the next four months, but wanted to leave the last month free, because negotiations tend to accelerate and intensify closer to deadlines.
“This is going to be both a marathon and a sprint at the same time,” the American official said. The six-month deal can be extended if both sides agree.
The Iranians also suggested that Ms. Ashton might make a visit to Iran before the March 17 meeting. Ms. Ashton leads the talks for the six world powers: the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — plus Germany.
Western officials and experts concede that Iran will have an enrichment program, but they want to constrain and control it to ensure that Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon quickly or undetected. They want some formula that limits the level of enrichment; caps the stockpiles of enriched uranium; dismantles or decommissions a large number of Iran’s centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium; removes the possibility that the heavy-water reactor will produce plutonium; and allows a deeper level of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, signed by Iran.
Iran, for its part, wants the removal of crippling economic sanctions imposed upon it by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States. At the same time, it wants to preserve its dignity and what it calls its right to enrich uranium, and to have a peaceful nuclear program like other signatories to the nonproliferation treaty.
The senior American official cautioned that public statements by all sides made to domestic audiences might inevitably create political difficulties, but that both sides here had agreed to try to be “thoughtful” about comments that might hurt the chance of successful negotiations.
The head of the American delegation, Wendy R. Sherman, will travel on Thursday from Vienna to brief allies in Jerusalem; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and two cities in the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, while telephoning other allies and key members of the United States Congress.
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