Iran to build more nuclear plants

Iran's government has ordered its atomic energy organisation to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants, state media has reported.

Irna, Iran's state news agency, said on Sunday that construction of five plants whose locations had already been decided would start within the next two months, while suitable locations would be found for the other five.

The announcement came after a cabinet meeting chaired by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president.

Ahmadinejad said that in order to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity, Iran would need 500,000 centrifuges of the current model being used in Natanz, Iran's largest nuclear enrichment plant.

"We should reach a position where we can produce from 250-300 tonnes of nuclear fuel a year. To do this we must employ new centrifuges with a higher speed," Ahmadinejad said.

'Response to resolution'

The decision comes only days after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, censured Iran over its nuclear programme and called on Tehran to halt the construction of a newly revealed enrichment facility near the city of Qom.

A senior US official said on Sunday that "if carried out [the plant construction] would constitute yet another violation of Iran's continuing obligation of suspension of all enrichment-related activities.

"There remains a fleeting opportunity for Iran to engage with the international community, if only it would make that choice," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the Obama administration has not yet released a formal response.

Alireza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Iran, said the latest announcement was a very clear reaction to the IAEA resolution.

"The head of Iran's atomic organisation said that Iran didn't have any plans to have any more nuclear enrichment facilities, but the resolution forced them to make this decision.

"He also said that the new enrichment facilities will ... be built in the mountains - safe from possible strikes by air, or any other kind of threat.

"Right now I don't think that ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran will help. Both Iran and the international community are moving towards a place where there will be no more space left for reconciliation," Ronaghi said.

Reduce ties

Iranian MPs responded angrily to the resolution by demanding that Ahmadinejad's government reduce ties with the IAEA.

"We consider the behaviour of the IAEA to be that of double standards and political. We want it to give up this double standard which has tarnished its reputation," the MPs said in a statement on Friday.

Western powers, including the US, accuse Iran of covertly seeking to develop atomic weapons. They demand that Iran accept a UN brokered offer that would delay Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon as well as engage in broader talks with the ultimate goal of persuading it to stop its enrichment programme.

Iran has amassed about 1,500 kilogrammes (3,300 pounds) of low-enriched
uranium at Natanz but Tehran insists it is for civilian purposes.

The UN offer aims to convince Iran to hand over more than 1,200 kilogrammes (2,600 pounds), more than the commonly accepted amount needed to produce weapons-grade material.

Iran has rejected the UN terms for the plan.

The decision to build more enrichment plants will aggravate tensions between the Islamic Republic and major powers seeking a diplomatic solution to the long-running dispute over Iranian nuclear work.
Source: Al Jazeera

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Counting begins after Honduras vote

Early unofficial results from the much-disputed presidential election in Honduras have put conservative opposition candidate Porfirio Lobo in the lead over his liberal rival, Elvin Santos.

No official results had been released by late on Sunday, but exit polls put Lobo, candidate for the opposition National Party, in a clear lead with about 55 per cent of the vote.

Santos, his closest challenger, trailed with about 33 per cent.

Sunday's vote was held five months after a military coup ousted the country's leftist president, Manuel Zelaya, plunging the country into political gridlock.

The interim government, installed after the coup, has said the poll will end the bitter stand-off over the country's leadership.

But supporters of the ousted president have called the election illegitimate and Zelaya himself called for a boycott.

Neither Zelaya nor the man who replaced him - Roberto Micheletti, the interim president – ran in the vote.

After polls closed, Zelaya told Al Jazeera he had information from his own poll conducted at more than 1,000 polling stations indicating that abstention rates had been between 60 and 65 per cent.

"This means that the election had low turnout and did not have the support of the people of Honduras," he said, speaking from inside the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Zelaya has been taking refuge in the Brazilian mission since sneaking back into the country several weeks ago.

'Dictatorship'

"We are fighting a dictatorship and until we defeat it we will not be satisfied," he said.

Sunday's elections, Zelaya said, had "no respect and no credibility".

Many regional powers, including the United States, have been divided over whether or not to recognise the outcome of the election.

Analysts say how much credibility the vote will be given will depend to a large extent on voter turnout.

Some Latin American countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina have already said they will not back the result.

"It's not possible to accept a coup, whether it’s a military coup or dressed up as a civilian coup," Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told reporters.

But the US has said that as long as the poll is shown to be free and fair, an election is the only way to resolve Honduras' political standoff.

Al Jazeera's Craig Mauro, reporting from the Tegucigalpa, said turnout had been very low in the city's poorer districts where support for Zelaya is strongest, but had been much higher in wealthier areas.

Polarised

Lucia Newman, Al Jazeera's Latin America editor, said the country remains highly polarised more than five months after Zelaya's ouster.

As a result, she said, turnout had been mixed with about one-third of voters expected to stay away from the polls either to protest Zelaya's ouster or for fear of violence.

More than 5,000 polling stations, including six in the United States for the about one million Honduran immigrants there, opened at 7am (13:00GMT) on Sunday.

Several opened late however, and polling was extended by up to two hours in some areas.

Conservative Porfirio Lobo and Liberal Elvin Santos, two prosperous businessmen, have been the front-runners in the vote.

But their campaigns have been overshadowed by the debate over whether Hondurans should vote at all in an election largely shunned by international monitors.

Lobo has said that if he wins, he will plead with foreign leaders to restore funding and seek a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

Honduras has been shut out by foreign donors since the June 28 coup, badly damaging the economy of one of Latin America's poorest nations.

Protest

Tensions were high across the country as voting got underway on Sunday, and in the northern city of San Pedro clashes broke out after police fired tear gas at several hundred pro-Zelaya protesters.

At least one person was injured and several of the protesters hurled rocks back at police.

However there were no reports of major unrest elsewhere in the country and reports said voting day had passed off calmly in Tegucigalpa.

The election was organised before Zelaya was removed from power, with the candidates chosen in primaries last year.

"These elections would have been the same, whether Zelaya had been there or not," Edward Schumacher-Matos, a newspaper columnist and Latin America analyst, said.

"You had a constitutional crisis that was precipitated by the president himself," he told Al Jazeera in New York.

"He was ordered arrested by the supreme court for violating the constitution. He tried to carry out a referendum that the supreme court, the congress, his own attorney-general and the human rights ombudsman all said was a violation of the constitution and illegal."

Zelaya had called for a vote asking the public whether they would support attempts to remove the one-term limit for the presidency set out in the constitution.
Source: Al Jazeera

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Indonesian's Canned Udhiyah

JAKARTA – Seeking to make the best of the Udhiyah, Indonesian Islamic organizations are canning the meat to be easier to ship to the needy in remote areas of the Muslim-dominated 17000 island archipelago. "With the canning, the meat would be timeless at least for three years and able to reach remote areas especially for natural disaster locations across the country," Hasnil Hasyim, regional manager of Mozaik, a working unit of Rumah Zakat Indonesia (RZI), told IslamOnline.

"The canned meats can even be retained for stock."

RZI, a leading Islamic charity organization, conserve the meat in cans and distribute the corned meat, known as Superkurban, among the poor across the world's fourth most populous country, with the world's largest Muslim population.

A packaging company, PT Suryajaya Abadi, has received order from RZI to can the sacrifice meat of 11,000 goats and five hundreds cows during `Eid Al- Adha.

"We received the cut meat and already separated the meat from the bones and inside," Cipto Santosa, the company's director, told IOL.

He said the process of canning takes nearly three weeks after the cows and goats are slaughtered and the meats sorted.

"We started to prepare everything after `Eid prayer," he noted.

"We use very modern machine."

All About Udhiyah: Rulings and Conditions

With the canning, the meats would be preserved and hygienic.

According to Hasnil from RZI, more than fifty percent the canned meats would be distributed among regular recipients, 20 percent for incidents and disaster victims, fifteen percent for stock and the rest for the members.

"Our scanned meat was very useful for natural disaster victims."

Indonesia is the fifth biggest country with about 235 million people and Muslims make up some 86.1 percent of the populace.

According to the World Bank, about 100 million Indonesians are living below poverty level, earning one dollar a day.

Cipto said the canning of sacrifice meat is new in Indonesia.

"But most ulemas have seen the benefit aspect of the new concept."

The Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) said the new way does not contradict with the teaching of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

"As long as the animals meet the healthy requirement, there is no problem to package the meat," Hafidz Usman, the Head of MUI West Java chapter, told IOL.

MUI Chairman Ma’ruf Amin also supports the canning of Udhiyah meat.

"I think it meets the benefit principles," he told IOL.

According to him, many Indonesians do not eat meat because of poverty and then comes `Eid Al- Adha with redundant quantities of meat.

"So, the new concept can answer the problem."

Principally, Ma’ruf said, people can make ijtihad (personal reasoning) as long as it does not contradict the Noble Quran and the Hadist.

"Canning the meat is a brilliant idea for benefiting the people."

Source: IslamOnline

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Mass udhiyah feeds Waziristan displaced

DERA ISMAIL KHAN – Mass Udhiyah arranged by Islamic charities are the only hope for around 400,000 displaced persons from troubled South Waziristan region who are living in shelter camps or staying with relatives to get a taste of meat during `Eid Al- Adha.

"We have arranged scores of mass sacrifices in almost all the shelter camps located in Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu and Kurk districts for the displaced persons," Naimatullah Khan, President of Al-Khidmat Foundation, the country’s largest NGO, told IslamoOline.net.

Islamic charities had placed billboards and banners in all big cities appealing to philanthropists to contribute generously to their mass sacrifice campaign for the displaced people.

Al-Khidmat received over 5000 contributions from all over the country, purely for the displaced persons from South Waziristan.

"It is very unfortunate that those people, who were until last year in a position to not only perform sacrifice for themselves but also help others, have been compelled to beg for food and shelter," lamented Khan.

"They really need our help."

The army launched a full-scale operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella of different Taliban groups.

Fierce clashes are continuing in various parts of the restive region between security forces and the militants.

The fighting has displaced more than 400,000 people who are taking shelter in camps located in neighboring regions.

"A majority of the displaced persons are staying with relatives and friends in different parts of the country, including Karachi," said Khan, who earned a good reputation as mayor of Karachi, the commercial hub of Pakistan, from 2001 to 2005.

"Therefore, we have asked all the local centers of our foundation to register the displaced persons so that they can collect meat on `Eid."

Al-Khidmat Foundation has a workforce of 100,000 volunteers, besides an organized crisis management cell.

* Massive

Currently, Al-Khidmat, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, Edhi Foundation, Alamgir welfare trust and other charities are engaged in relief work in shelter camps in districts neighboring South Waziristan.

Abu Ismail, the spokesman of Falah-e-Insaniat, admits that despite their utmost efforts, Islamic charities cannot reach all the displaced persons.

"Not merely their numbers are huge but they are scattered too," he told IOL.

"There is no proper documentation or registration of these people. It’s just because of our local networks and people’s confidence on us that we have managed to locate many of them in big and small cities."

The foundation, unofficially associated with the outlawed Jammat-ul-Dawa’h which represents the Ahl-e-Hadit school of thought and has one of the most organized relief setup in Pakistan, has made arrangements for mass sacrifices.

"We have received a positive response from philanthropists and ordinary people."

Many of the displaced, infuriated by a poor government's performance regarding registration and aid provision, are craving for help.

Momind Khan, a middle-aged man from Shakai area of South Waziristan, is counting on Islamic charities.

"I hope we will have a good time during the three days of `Eid," he told IOL.

"We are passing time in any way, but our kids have gone weak because of scanty and substandard food and lack of proper shelter in this cold weather," he fumed.

"They too are craving for good food."

He showered praise on the Islamic relief charities for trying to extend a helping hand to displaced people like him.

"May Allah bless them. They are the only one who have taken care of us in this testing time."

Azam Mehsud, a father of three, is equally touched by the `Eid gesture of the Islamic charities.

"We are homeless right now but not hopeless.

"They have let us know that we are not alone on this `Eid. We cannot forget this altruism."
Source: IslamOnline

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