| Window Remains for Iran to Curb Controversial Nuclear Program Posted: 27 Jan 2012 08:56 PM PST <!--AV--> International pressure is mounting to convince Iran not to build a nuclear weapon. Iran has responded with denials, tough talk and an intensified effort to enrich uranium. But some analysts believe it is still possible for the West to persuade Iranian leaders to abandon their alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.
Iranian officials speak defiantly about their right to build a nuclear weapon, but also say they have no intention of doing so.
Experts say Iran is using machines, however, to enrich the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon - uranium - to near weapons-grade purity.
After European Union foreign ministers recently agreed to pressure Iran by banning purchases of its oil, the group's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton scoffed at Iranian claims of peaceful intentions.
"If you look at the low-enriched uranium that they have, you have to ask a very simple question, 'What's it for?' And when I ask that question, as I do repeatedly, I don't get an answer," said Ashton.
Mark Fitzpatrick at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies said Iran has put itself in a position to build a nuclear bomb, but not right away.
"If Iran wanted to produce a nuclear weapon, I still think it would take them over a year to do so," said Fitzpatrick.
Iran's nuclear facilities are reported to be at certain sites, shown in satellite photos released by an Iranian opposition group in the United States. But experts say, what is really worrisome is that Iran is now able to enrich uranium more quickly, and to a higher level, and is working harder to hide its nuclear facilities.
"Iran is moving some of its enrichment operations into a well-defended facility inside a mountain at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom. Once centrifuges are enriching uranium inside that mountain facility, they are largely out of reach of conventional attack," said Fitzpatrick.
Western officials say they do not want to take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
They leave the possibility open, though, as U.S. President Barack Obama did during his State of the Union address.
"Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal," said Obama.
But the president quickly added that if Iran abandons its alleged nuclear weapons plan and allows international inspections to prove it, the country can "rejoin the community of nations."
The International Atomic Energy Agency is sending a delegation to Iran to renew talks. At the U.S. mission to the IAEA in Vienna, Jennifer Hall-Godfrey told VOA via Skype the talks present a chance to avoid more sanctions or possible military action.
"The director-general [of the IAEA] has asked for constructive meetings and we would also like to see that this is a substantive conversation, not another conversation about when to talk, but actually beginning to address the questions and the issues that the IAEA has put forth," said Hall-Godfrey.
Analysts say they believe Iranian leaders can still be persuaded not to build nuclear weapons. They also say it may be impossible to stop them, however - even with military strikes - if they decide to go forward. 
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| Photographers, Employees Await Fallout from Kodak Bankruptcy Posted: 27 Jan 2012 08:00 PM PST <!--AV--> The recent bankruptcy of Kodak - America's largest photographic film company - is expected to affect employees and photographers alike, especially those who rely on the film, paper and chemicals Kodak has produced since the 19th century.
Jim Megargee compares himself and others like him to dinosaurs on the brink of extinction. He is a traditional photographer confronted by the threat that digital technology poses to the developing and printing of images in a darkroom.
"There's a physical difference between a silver print and a digital print," he said. "There's just a physical difference to them. It's something not many people think of. With a silver print, that's actually an etching on paper into a silver layer that's embedded in the paper. With the digital print it's ink on paper."
Megargee says the Kodak bankruptcy is not the end of the world for darkroom photographers - at least not yet. He says plenty of supplies are available, although some products have been discontinued.
"What happens to the photographer when you lose a material, like your favorite film gets taken off the market and the company stops making it, there are other companies,." he said. "They're not going to replace that film, but it may be a similar product."
But discontinuing any given material means a loss of jobs for the people who produced it.
"Personally, [I am] very concerned," said Ray Rock, one of the employees at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York facing possible unemployment. "I still need a few more years before I can get retirement benefits, we'll see what happens."
Observers say Kodak is likely to continue as a corporation by capitalizing on some of the digital imaging technology that it pioneered.
"My hunch is they will be mostly an intellectual property company, meaning it will just be collecting revenue from licensing its patents and technology," said Bruce Upbin, managing editor of Forbes magazine.
Jim Megarkee says he can create a fine art print in less than an hour. He jokes that photographers who trade traditional photography for digital go over to what he calls "the dark side" [ie. the enemy]. He cautions that doing it right is not as easy as pressing a button.
"It's not unusual to see someone sitting at a computer station and trying to do the same thing and taking two, or three or four hours," he said.
Megarkee says that comparing traditional chemical photography with digital is like comparing water colors and oil paintings - they are very different. This dinosaur is hoping for a continued supply of traditional products to prevent his extinction. 
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| Russian security forces clash with militants in Dagestan; 9 killed Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:58 PM PST DAGESTAN, RUSSIA (BNO NEWS) -- Russian security forces clashed with militants in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on late Friday evening, leaving four service members and five militants killed. Several others were injured. The clash happened during a police operation in a forest between Chernyayevka and Ukrainsky in the district of Kizlyar, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. It said the operation, by forces belonging to the Interior Ministry, was carried out to find militants in the region. "The militants opened fire with a machine gun and sub-machine guns when the police tried to block them in a dugout," said National Counter Terrorism Committee spokesman Nikolai Sintsov, as quoted by Itar-Tass. He said the militants were members of the so-called Kizlyar group which has previously carried out attacks in the district. Sintsov said four service members were killed while another four were injured, although their conditions were not immediately known. "All the five militants in the dugout were (also) killed in the clash," the spokesman added. He said the dugout was found to contain food, equipment, weapons and bomb-making materials. Militants in the region continue to carry out attacks against security forces, police, and civilians, more than a decade after a separatist war ended in Chechnya. The volatile region of Dagestan neighbors Chechnya where about 50 percent of all militant attacks in Russia took place in 2010. (Copyright 2012 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.) 
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| NASA Scientists Discover More Than Two Dozen New Exoplanets Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:46 PM PST Twenty-six new exoplanets have been discovered by NASA scientists seeking to locate planets outside our solar system. The alien planets were found orbiting stars in 11 newly discovered solar systems by the Kepler telescope, which the U.S. space agency operates.
The exoplanets range in size from slightly larger than Earth to larger than the gas giant Jupiter in our solar system. They were discovered by Kepler, a space telescope which stares at 150,000 stars in a narrow sliver of the night sky from its perch orbiting the sun.
The alien planets orbit their host stars, which are bigger than the sun, once every six to 143 days. The largest of the newly-discovered solar systems, called Kepler-33, hosts five exoplanets ranging in size from one-and-a-half to five times Earth's size.
Doug Hudgins is the program scientist with the Kepler mission. Hudgins says scientists do not believe any of the newly discovered exoplanets could support life.
"All of them are in orbits that are smaller than our Earth's orbit around our sun. So they would be fairly hot planets," Hudgins said.
In the two years since the Kepler began observing the cosmos, scientists have discovered 61 exoplanets and some 2,300 candidate planets that need to be verified through further observations.
Kepler identifies exoplanets by continuously monitoring the brightness of a distant star in its narrow field. A planet orbiting its host sun casts a faint shadow that is detected by Kepler.
The telescope confirms planetary candidates by measuring so-called Transit Timing Variations, or TTVs, which occur when two or more planets in a tightly packed solar system orbit their host stars.
The gravitational pull of each passing planet causes one to speed up and another to slow down, according to Hudgins, helping astronomers confirm a planetary observation
"If you had something that was just mimicking a planet transit, they wouldn't interact. The fact that you see these transit timing variations tells us that there's a gravitational interaction and that tells us that these really have to be planets because they are interacting with each other," Hudgins said.
Hudgins says the ultimate goal for planet hunters is a telescope that can separate the light of a dimmer planet from its bright star, allowing scientists to study its electromagnetic spectrum.
The information gleaned from the light spectrum could tell astronomers what gases make up a planet's atmosphere and possibly even some surface characteristics, according to Hudgins, who is anxious to find signs of life.
"That's why we do this. That's the exciting thing, We are addressing one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of humankind. And that is, are we alone?," Hudgins said.
Hudgins believes such a telescope will be built in his lifetime, allowing Kepler scientists to move on to the next phase of their discovery mission. 
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| Moderate earthquakes jolt Tokyo, no damage reported Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:04 PM PST TOKYO (BNO NEWS) -- Two moderate earthquakes struck near a dormant volcano in eastern Japan on early Saturday morning, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The quake was widely felt in the capital. A 5.0-magnitude earthquake at 7:39 a.m. local time (2239 GMT Friday) was centered about 16.7 kilometers (10.3 miles) northwest of Yamakita, a town located in the Ashigarakami District of Kanagawa Prefecture, or about 67 kilometers (41 miles) west of Tokyo. It struck at a depth of approximately 20 kilometers (12.4 miles), according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Just minutes later, at 7:43 a.m. local time (2243 GMT Friday), an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale struck the same area. The earthquakes struck close to Mount Fuji, a volcano which last erupted in 1707 but is currently considered to be at a low risk of eruption. Shaking as a result of Saturday's earthquake could be felt across Tokyo, prompting authorities to briefly halt Tōkaidō Shinkansen high-speed train services as a precaution. The train services resumed soon after, and there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. Japan sits on the so-called 'Pacific Ring of Fire', an arc of fault lines circling the Pacific Basin which is prone to frequent and large earthquakes as well as volcanic eruptions. The University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute predicted earlier this month that the capital faces a 70 percent probability of experiencing a magnitude-7 quake within four years. On March 11, 2011, an enormous 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan, generating a devastating tsunami. The earthquake and resulting tsunami left at least 15,833 people killed while 3,671 others remain missing and are feared dead. (Copyright 2012 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.) 
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