iran yaptırımları değiş-tokuş sistemiyle aşıyor

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian firm AHT exports millions of dollars worth of nuts and dried fruit from Iran each month but Western financial sanctions mean it gets little money in return. Instead it is paid with other goods, such as cardboard boxes and metal cans from China.
"Most of our business right now is like this. No money is involved in the process," Mohammad Amin, managing director of the pistachio and raisin exporter, told Reuters at an international food industry show in Dubai this month.
"We import the goods, sell the goods to the local market, get the money from the local market, and then pay my staff and my farmers.
"No money is circulating -- it's like thousands of years ago," Amin said between negotiations with prospective buyers over bowls brimming with pistachios. Last year AHT's exports totalled about $100 million, mostly to China and India.

türk yetkililer esad rejiminin silah ticaretine göz mu yumuyor?

Syria is using Turkey as a route to bypass sanctions and obtain material and equipment for its weapons industry, intelligence sources have told The Times.
While the European Union is today set to tighten sanctions on the Government of President Bashar Assad, weapons materials from Iran, China and elsewhere may be getting in through Turkey, in spite of Ankara’s tough public stance against Damascus.
“We don’t think that the Turkish Government is openly encouraging the trade but some officials know about it,” one Middle Eastern intelligence source told The Times. “Let’s say they are turning a blind eye.”
Three Turkish companies are selling equipment to a Syrian government research institute that makes vehicle armour and ammunition for the police and the army, the source alleged.
At the heart of the operation is the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) in Syria, currently subject to US and EU sanctions. According to an intelligence document seen by The Times, it is “assisting the Syrian security forces by producing weapons used . . . to violently suppress protests and commit war crimes.”
The document named two Turkish manufacturing companies allegedly supplying SSRC with missile manufacturing material. Both companies deny the allegations. A third firm alleged to be involved in the transfer of Chinese-made machine tools to SSRC for possible use in missile production did not respond to a request for comment.

iran-azerbaycan ilişkilerinde tansiyon artıyor

BAKU (Reuters) - An Iranian journalist is being held in custody on suspicion of drug possession in Azerbaijan, prompting a warning from Iran's embassy that the arrest could damage already tense relations between the neighbouring nations.

Anar Bayramli, a reporter for Iran's Sahar TV and the Fars news agency, was detained last week and Azeri authorities ordered him held in custody on Monday pending further investigations and a possible trial, saying they found him in possession of .387 grams of heroin.

"This incident may lead to a worsening of bilateral relations," Azeri news agency ANS quoted an Iranian embassy representative in Baku as saying. The representative said Bayramli is "a devout, respectable person."

Azerbaijan is an oil-rich Muslim Caspian Sea state whose secular government has cordial ties with the United States.

Tension between Iran and Azerbaijan has increased after killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, which Tehran has blamed on Israel and the United States, and attacks or alleged plots against Israelis in several countries including Azerbaijan.

Last month Azeri authorities arrested two men suspected of plotting to attack foreigners, including the Israeli ambassador in Baku and a rabbi.

putin orduyu güçlendireceğini açıkladı

KOMSOMOLSK-ON-AMUR, Russia (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected one of Russia's new stealth fighter jets on Monday and said Russia needs a stronger military to protect it against foreign attempts to stoke conflict around its borders.

Less than two weeks before a presidential election in which he hopes for a resounding win, Putin visited Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a snow-swept city in Russia's Far East where military and civilian planemaker Sukhoi is a big employer.

He prefaced his trip with a newspaper article intended to burnish his image as a strong leader, saying Russia would spend 23 trillion roubles ($768 billion) over a decade to modernise the former Cold War superpower's armed forces.

"New regional and local wars are being sparked before our very eyes," Putin wrote in the article published on the front page of Russia's official gazette, Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

"There are attempts to provoke such conflicts in the immediate vicinity of the borders of Russia and our allies," he wrote ahead of the March 4 election which he is expected to win.

somali ve yemen'de gizli görev yürüten 4 amerikalı'yı taşıyan uçak düşmüş

A US military light aircraft developed for secret operations has crashed in Djibouti with the loss of all four crewmen on board.

The circumstances of the crash and the mission it was engaged in were not being disclosed. But the deaths of the four special operations airmen and the involvement of the turbo-prop U28A aircraft highlighted the growing use of a US base in Djibouti for secret missions in Somalia and Yemen.

A spokesman for US Air Force 1st Special Operations Wing confirmed there were no passengers on board the U28A when it crashed on Saturday, which might indicate it was en route to Somalia or Yemen to pick up special operations troops.

An urgent investigation has now been launched by the US Air Force.

The light aircraft which cost $3.4 million was designed to support special operations forces in the field. It has a single turbo-prop engine and can land on dirt or grass strips. The U28A, made by the Swiss company, Pilatus, was first introduced in 2005.

muhtemel yeni almanya cumhurbaşkanı, eski stasi avcısıymış

A protestant pastor who made his name hunting Stasi agents is set to become the next President of Germany after being nominated by Angela Merkel and the main Opposition parties last night.
The choice of Mr Gauck, 72, represents a hefty slice of humble pie for Ms Merkel who forced through her own candidate against him 18 months ago in a bruising political battle only to see Christian Wulff quit on Friday after a series of claims of impropriety.
But the German Chancellor has regained some of her surefootedness by agreeing so quickly to support the former East German anti-Communist crusader, avoiding another messy fight that would have sorely distracted her from her main focus of saving the euro.

MI5 Charlie Chaplin'i ABD'ye karşı korumuş: komünist değildi

Charlie Chaplin’s newly declassified MI5 files show that, although the film star was friendly with a Soviet spy, he was never suspected of being a true Communist by the British authorities.
Two dossiers on the film star in the National Archives show that the FBI repeatedly contacted MI5 in attempts to find hard evidence that the British-born comic had Communist leanings, but officers eventually concluded that the American claims were unreliable.
The only connection with a questionable character was a telegram sent to Chaplin while he was in London by Ivor Montagu, a film-maker, table tennis champion and Soviet spy known by the codename Intelligentsia. Although MI5 intercepted the telegram, in which Montagu said that he hoped to be back from Peking in time to meet Chaplin, it did not pass it on to the FBI.
MI5 found no evidence to support the Americans’ belief that Chaplin’s real name was Israel Thornstein, but it had to admit defeat in finding a birth record for the film star — normally a simple task. This inability to find a record in the register of births in Somerset House led agents to speculate that he had been born abroad, possibly in France, although searches of French registers also drew blanks.

rus güvenlik servisleri lebedev'in bankasını arıyor

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian security service agents searched a Moscow bank controlled by billionaire tycoon Alexander Lebedev, owner of Britain's Independent and Evening Standard newspapers, on Friday, his aide said.

Former KGB spy Lebedev was not at the National Reserve Bank when several agents from Russia's Federal Security Service, the main successor the KGB secret police, arrived for the search, his aide Artyom Artyomov said.

The FSB agents did not appear to be armed and were not wearing masks, said Artyomov, adding that Lebedev was also concerned by checks by about 130 officials from the central bank which has been going on for a week.