TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme religious leader said Sunday that his nation would not bow to pressure after Western powers announced Friday that they would offer a new package of incentives to coax Iran to give up its nuclear program.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader, who has the final word on state matters, did not [...]

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Never mind the radiation: British contingency planners worried there would be a dramatic shortage of tea in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, recently declassified documents showed Monday.
The shortfall of the staple British beverage would be “very serious” if the country were to come under attack with atomic and hydrogen bombs, said according to a [...]

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WHEN Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was asked to ponder the future of the world before an audience of powerful businessmen and politicians, at a meeting in Switzerland earlier this year, he could have chosen any topic he liked. What he focused on was both a hoary old favourite, and a newly popular preoccupation, of [...]

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THE United Nations Population Fund projected last week that Russia’s population will drop from 142 million today to 100 million in the next 40 to 50 years. The agency’s report praised recent government efforts to increase birth rates and extend lives. But not enough is being done to counter stark demographic forces: an impending decrease [...]

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It’s true China is booming, Russia is growing more assertive, terrorism is a threat. But if America is losing the ability to dictate to this new world, it has not lost the ability to lead. American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. [...]

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The Sunday Times of London reports that Israel’s intelligence information on Iran’s nuclear capabilities appears to belie the official United States stance on the issue. The US National Intelligence Estimate of last December concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003. However, the Times reports, Israel has made a [...]

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Corn-based fuel isn’t the villain critics contend, but shifting to other crops is critical
Blame energy costs, not ethanol, for your grocery bill
Has ethanol contributed to the surge in food prices? Not very much, concludes a group of agricultural economists at Texas A&M University in an Apr. 10 report from the school’s Agricultural & Food Policy [...]

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