“Threatening Iran and attacking Iran will harm America … Sanctions will not have any impact on our determination to continue our nuclear course … In response to threats of oil embargo and war, we have our own threats to impose at the right time,” Khamenei told worshippers in a speech broadcast live on state television.

“I have no fear of saying that we will back and help any nation or group that wants to confront and fight against the Zionist regime (Israel).” Daily Press

The A6 and A7 with the new engine sprint from 0 to 100kph in 5.1 and 5.3 seconds, respectively. Also, considering the performance, Audi has fitted a sound actuator in the exhaust system, for sporty exhaust notes.

The new engine is currently on sale only in the U.K., but will be made available globally soon. The latest variants of both A6 and A7 are available in India, and considering that this is a diesel engine, we won’t be surprise if these variants make it here in a short while. Oncars

Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time the U.S. had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.

Promising the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give President Barack Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this fall.

Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of U.S. troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead.

“It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.

The U.S. has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by this fall. There has been no schedule set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 U.S. troops who will remain, only that all are to be out by the end of 2014.

Panetta said U.S. troops would move into an “advise-and-assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success.

The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. U.S. troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.

At the same time, Panetta said the NATO discussions would also focus on a potential downsizing of Afghan security forces from 350,000 troops, largely because of the expense of maintaining such a large army. The U.S. and other NATO countries support those forces at a cost of about $6 billion a year, but financial crises in Europe are causing countries to balk at the bill.

He and his team played down last week’s announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that his country would break with its NATO allies and accelerate the withdrawal of its forces in Afghanistan by pulling back its troops a year early, by the end of 2013. Pentagon officials said Sarkozy and the U.S. might be more in tune than it appeared, although they acknowledged confusion about the French president’s statement and said their goal was to sort it out at the NATO meeting today.

“A lot of policy officials in Paris were scrambling” after Sarkozy’s announcement, said a senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity. “So getting exactly to what the French bottom line is hasn’t been easy for them, much less for us.”

Sarkozy made the announcement after an attack by a rogue Afghan soldier who killed four unarmed French soldiers on a training mission. There have been similar incidents of Afghan troops’ killing of U.S. forces, including the death of a Marine in Helmand province early Wednesday.

The senior defense official said the Americans considered the attacks as “isolated incidents,” although “obviously very disturbing.” He said vetting procedures for Afghan security forces were being reviewed.

Panetta said he would also seek to reassure NATO that although budget constraints and a focus on Asia were forcing the U.S. to withdraw two combat brigades — as many as 10,000 troops — from Europe, it was not abandoning its allies. The U.S., he said, would try to make up some of the difference by rotating more troops in for training exercises in Europe. By Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times

“The sanctions have been biting much, much more literally in recent weeks than they have until this time,” CIA Director David Petraeus said at a Senate intelligence committee hearing.

“What we have to see now is how does that play out, what is the level of popular discontent inside Iran, does that influence the strategic decision-making of the Supreme Leader and the regime, keeping in mind that the regime’s paramount goal in all that they do is their regime survival,” he said.

Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost “considerable value” and there have been “runs on the bank” as Iranians try to dump domestic currency and acquire assets that will hold value better as inflation “takes off,” Petraeus said.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that sanctions so far had not caused Iran’s leaders to change their pursuit of nuclear capabilities.

But he said some Iranian officials appear more willing to conduct an attack in the United States if they feel threatened, citing last year’s alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

“The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” Clapper said in his Senate testimony.

“We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas,” he said.

Senators at the hearing asked about Israel’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, amid speculation that Israel might launch a pre-emptive strike at the country’s known nuclear sites.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s chairwoman, and Petraeus said they met recently with the director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.

“We’re doing a lot with the Israelis, working together with them. And of course for them, this is, as they have characterized, is an existential threat,” Clapper said.

Petraeus, appearing with other intelligence community leaders at an annual open hearing on global threats to U.S. security, said that China has reduced imports of Iranian oil but “it remains to be seen whether that continues.”

“It appears that Saudi Arabian production is ramping up and can fill some of the demand that might have been met by Iranian exports now that there are the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran,” he said.

The United States imposed the harshest sanctions so far on Iran when President Barack Obama on December 31 signed into law new sanctions on transactions involving Iran’s central bank.

The European Union last week imposed a ban on the import, purchase or transport of Iranian oil. Existing contracts can be honored up to July 1.

The West has imposed sanctions over the years due to concerns that Iran’s nuclear development program is aimed at building a weapon. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

The latest U.S. sanctions will have a deeper impact because the Central Bank of Iran handles a large volume of foreign bank transactions and receives the revenue for the roughly 70 percent of oil sold by the National Iranian Oil Company, Clapper said.

‘CRITICAL YEAR’

“According to most timelines I’ve heard, 2012 will be a critical year for convincing or preventing Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon,” Feinstein, a Democrat, said.

Iran is keeping open the option to develop a nuclear bomb but U.S. intelligence agencies do not know whether its leaders ultimately will decide to build one, Clapper said in his written statement to the panel.

New U.S. sanctions were likely to have a greater impact than previous ones, but were not expected to lead to the downfall of Iran’s leadership, Clapper said.

“We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so,” he said in written testimony. “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

Iran’s advances, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthen the assessment that “Iran is well capable of producing enough highly-enriched uranium for a weapon if its political leaders, specifically the Supreme Leader himself, choose to do so,” Clapper said.

“Iran’s economic difficulties probably will not jeopardize the regime, absent a sudden and sustained fall in oil prices or a sudden domestic crisis that disrupts oil exports,” Clapper’s written testimony said.

Iran has sought to “exploit the Arab Spring but has reaped limited benefits, thus far,” the testimony said. Tehran’s biggest regional concern is ally Syria, where a change in leadership would be a major strategic loss for Iran.

Nearly a year into the unrest, conflict in Syria is unlikely to be resolved quickly, and it is a matter of time before Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad falls, Clapper said.

“I personally believe it’s a question of time before Assad falls, but that’s the issue, it could be a long time,” Clapper said. “Protraction of these demonstrations, the opposition continues to be fragmented, but I do not see how he can sustain his rule of Syria.”

CHINA CONCERNED

Arab Spring uprisings fueled concern among Chinese leaders that similar unrest could undermine their rule, prompting Beijing to launch its harshest crackdown on dissent in at least a decade, Clapper said in his written testimony.

At the same time, worries about the global economy helped heighten Beijing’s resistance to external pressure and suspicion of U.S. intentions, it said.

China continued a policy of permitting modest appreciation of the renminbi, “although it remains substantially undervalued,” the testimony said.

Espionage by China, Russia, and Iran will pose significant security threats to the United States in coming years, the written statement said.

Russia and China are aggressive and successful in economic espionage against the United States, and “Iran’s intelligence operations against the United States, including cyber capabilities, have dramatically increased in recent years in depth and complexity,” the statement said.

Foreign intelligence services have targeted the unclassified and classified computer networks of U.S. government agencies, businesses and universities. “We assess that many intrusions into U.S. networks are not being detected,” the statement said. By Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell, Yahoo Daily News

Growth was “a relatively feeble” 3.7% during the year, down from 7.6% in 2010, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) said.

Exports from the Philippines, one of the main drivers of growth, have fallen for seven consecutive months.

The government had set a growth target of between 4.5% to 5.5% for 2011.

The NSCB said growth was also hurt by “obstinate exogenous economic woes, the government underspending on infrastructure in the second and third quarters and the sustained decline in fishing.”

Policy easing?

The latest data showed that growth for the October to December quarter also stood at 3.7%, compared with 6.1% during the same period a year earlier.

When compared with the previous quarter, the economy grew by 0.9%.

Analysts said the numbers may put pressure on Philippines central bank to ease its monetary policy in a bid to boost growth.

“This is clearly below trend and way below the potential growth that the Philippines can deliver,” said Jun Neri of Bank of the Philippine Islands in Manila.

“It highlights the necessity of more aggressive spending and easier monetary policy.”

Mr Neri added since the eurozone debt crisis continued to remain a threat, the central bank may even cut its interest rate “earlier than expected.” BBC News

Bernard Weber, founder-president of New7Wonders, congratulated the Filipinos as the 8.2-kilometer Palawan river joined the Amazon rainforest, Vietnam’s Halong Bay and Argentina’s Iguazu Falls as among the world’s new seven wonders of nature.

“When your very own President Aquino came out in support of the PPUR campaign, I knew that this country was taking the New7Wonders of Nature seriously,” said Weber. “Fans of PPUR all over the world responded to his call for action by voting in record numbers and today’s confirmation is the well-earned reward for this extraordinary display of enthusiasm.”

Aquino even sailed the river last year on board a paddleboat as he urged Filipinos to help push the Philippines’ bid for a spot in the New7Wonders of Nature.

Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn welcomed the news, saying it would help the country’s renewed campaign to boost tourism.

“This confirmation is wonderful news for Puerto Princesa, and a great example of how now it’s more fun to be in the Philippines,” said Hagedorn, in reference to the Department of Tourism’s “It’s more fun in the Philippines” slogan.

“World-wide exposure of our natural beauty on this level is critical both for tourism and for our image nationally and internationally,” he said.

The Puerto Princesa Underground River, about 50 kilometers north of Puerto Princesa City,  consists of a limestone karst mountain landscape, several large chambers containing significant formations of stalactites and stalagmites.

This navigable underground river winds through a cave before flowing directly into the West Philippine Sea. At the exit, a flawless lagoon is framed by ancient trees growing right to the water’s edge.

The campaign organized by Swiss foundation New7Wonders has attracted great interest, mobilizing celebrities including Argentinian football star Lionel Messi calling on fans to pick his home country’s Iguazu Falls.

Provisional results of the final seven were released last November 12 after a long consultation process lasting from December 2007 to July 2009, when world citizens were asked to put forward sites which they deemed were natural wonders.

More than a million votes were cast to trim the list of more than 440 contenders in over 220 countries down to a shortlist of 77.

The group was then further cut to 28 finalists by a panel of experts.

Anyone in the world was then able to vote for the final seven via telephone, text messages or Internet social networks.

Founded in 2001 by filmmaker Bernard Weber in Zurich, the foundation New7Wonders is based on the same principle on which the seven ancient wonders of the world were established. That list of seven wonders was attributed to Philon of Byzantium in ancient Greece.

New7Wonders said its aim is to create a global memory by garnering participation worldwide. INQUIRER

Activists and the Arab League urged the UN to take stronger action after a surge in violence this week in which dozens of people have died.

The UK, France and Germany drafted a resolution with Arab states, supporting the League’s call for President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to a deputy.

Russia, an ally of Mr Assad, has said it will not back the text.

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters after the meeting in New York that the draft resolution was unacceptable, but Moscow was ready to engage in further talks.

He said Russia had set out its “red lines” and that the resolution should not contain any threat of sanctions or an arms embargo.

The draft “not only ignored our red lines but also added some new elements which we find unacceptable as a matter of principle,” AFP news agency reported him as saying.

“The Security Council cannot go about imposing solutions in crisis situations in various countries of the world.”

The BBC’s UN correspondent, Barbara Plett, says Russia will not support any measure that could mean regime change.

Moscow was also concerned about a warning of further measures if Syria does not comply with the resolution, fearing that this could open the door to outside intervention, our correspondent says.

Russia and China vetoed a previous draft resolution against Syria late last year.

Western nations have been hoping that Arab League support for this resolution will soften Russian resistance.

‘Long overdue’

The current draft, presented to the council by Morocco, largely supports a plan outlined by the Arab League earlier this week calling for Mr Assad to hand authority to a deputy, who would form a national unity government with the opposition within two months.

The draft resolution calls for further measures if the Syrian government does not comply with the call for political transition.

The council will not vote on the resolution until next week.

“There is now a chance that the Security Council will finally take a clear stand on Syria. That is long overdue,” said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

The French ambassador to the UN, Gerrard Araud described the situation in Syria as a major crisis.

“The country is sinking into civil war. We are desperately looking for a political solution,” he said.

“We have here the League of Arab States which is proposing a solution. So our reaction is simply to support it, but again, there is nothing else.”

Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, expressed anger towards the states that drafted the resolution.

“They are talking about my country without consulting us, without sharing with us their concerns, their remarks,” he said.

“They deal with us as if we are a former colony, that we should subjugate ourselves to their will. They are wrong and they will be disappointed.”

Growing violence

The UN meeting comes amid a spike in violence across Syria, with activists reporting 135 people killed in the past two days.

Gen Mustafa al-Dabi, head of the Arab League’s monitoring mission, said violence had soared “in a significant way” in recent days.

Earlier in the week, the general had claimed that the Arab League mission had helped reduce the level of violence in Syria.

Opposition forces have set up checkpoints in parts of the capital, and correspondents say forces loyal to Mr Assad appear unable to maintain control.

The UN has conceded it cannot keep track of the death toll, which it estimated as more than 5,400 people since the unrest began last March.

The government says it is fighting “terrorists and armed gangs” and claims that some 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed. BBC News

Prices also dropped through their 200-day floor – a bearish indicator not seen since 2008.  Adding to gold bugs’ fears was the dramatic fall-off in speculative interest, which came towards the end of last year and saw hedge funds’ long bets drop to a trough for recent months.

But as seen in equity markets, new years often bring renewed optimism to commodities, and according to one of the most respected surveys around, gold investors have stayed bullish and tipped the metal to hit $2,000 or more before the end of 2012.

The closely followed study by GFMS came to the conclusion that renewed investor interest and price strength was likely to emerge in 2012′s second half, and the consultancy expects the run to have enough force behind it to stay alive until 2013.

From the precious metal’s current $1,714 standpoint a leap to $2,000 doesn’t seem too unachievable, particularly if the America’s Federal Reserve rolls out another round of quantitative easing, as it hinted in Wednesday’s FOMC minutes, while keep interest rates on hold until 2014.

There are other catalysts for a near 17% surge in gold, however.  ETF Securities (ETFS) points out that central bank buying of the precious commodity is at its highest level since the 1970s, and that gold exchange traded product (ETP) holdings are showing some bullish signs.

‘Global gold ETP holdings hit a record high of 76.5 million [ounces] by the end of 2011, indicating long-term investors view the recent price decline excessive,’ ETFS senior analyst Daniel Wills explained, adding that as interest rates stay negative in real terms, currencies debase and euro risk refuses to fade, ETF gold buying should continue to rise, a trend that started to show in the opening weeks of 2012.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)’s Nick Moore, the bank’s head of commodities research, also believes that gold can still offer investors some upside. Scrap supply tailed off in 2011 and supply is expected to fall further this year.  Moore expects this to play out over the first half as jewellery owners – the key supplier of gold for recycling – hoard their trinkets in case of price spikes.

Moreover, Moore points out that the jump in comex shorts taken out in December may have been hedge funds anticipating the annual January price re-balancing, which is typically seen after a thrusting commodity bull run or a dramatic crash.

‘The fact gold was one of the strongest performers in 2011 suggested the price might suffer early in January…this has not been the case,’ Moore said, adding that similar to GFMS respondents RBS is bullish on the outlook for gold’s price in 2012.

Hurdles to gold’s jump

RBS’ bullishness on gold is not without a caution, however.  Moore argues that underlying indicators point toward lower prices further in the future, and said he would not be surprised if these eventually curbed a renewed bull run.

There are already some signals of weakness in gold’s price too, the commodities research head points out; while buying picked up again after the start of the year, exchange traded fund (ETF) holdings have risen by a sluggish three tonnes since the end of 2011 and speculative comex net longs have climbed by an equally moderate degree.

Even GFMS urged that gold’s fundamentals seem to call for lower prices in the future.  After hitting $2,000 or thereabouts, a fall would restore some balance to the market. By Sarah Miloudi, Citywire

According to a report in The Washington Post newspaper, the Philippines has indicated a willingness to host American ships, surveillance aircraft and joint military exercises.

The U.S. was forced to leave its naval base in the Philippines Subic Bay in the 1990s after lawmakers rejected a new treaty.  But Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia analyst with the University of New South Wales says the Philippines’ leadership is now reaching out to the U.S. to counter China’s growing military power and continued confrontational incidents between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.

“The Philippines’ nationalism is aroused because there are even further intrusions since last year in the Philippines waters and the Philippines has got basically a very low basis of which to even know what’s going on let alone exercise jurisdiction,” Thayer said.

The South China Sea is of tremendous strategic importance to world shipping and is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia all hold competing claims to parts of the sea.

The talk of an increased American military presence in the Philippines follows agreements to base thousands of U.S. troops in Australia and to station warships in Singapore.

Thayer is not surprised by the talk of again increasing American and Philippine ties, given that in the last few years the Philippines has been the most vocal advocate for U.S. involvement in the region, and is the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance in Southeast Asia. The United States already has about 600 Special Operations forces advising the Philippine military engaged in fighting al-Qaida linked rebels.

The U.S. takes no position on individual claims in the South China Sea, but supports a multilateral approach to settle disputes based on international maritime law and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas.

Thayer says concern about China has given the U.S. military the opening to redeploy to the Asia Pacific region to protect its own economic and strategic interests and to be welcomed as a force for stability.

“This re-balancing and the talk about Asia Pacific extends all the way down to rotating Marines through Australia, is to extend the instant reach for the United States to react to contingencies and to exhibit a constant pressure of reassurance and stability throughout the region,” Thayer said.

He says Southeast Asian support for increased U.S. involvement has forced China to reassess its strategy in the South China Sea, and to focus more on engaging counties in the region through diplomatic channels. By Brian Padden, Voice of America

Mr Hague was answering an urgent question on 24 January 2012, tabled by Conservative Robert Halfon, who wanted to know what action was being taken against the country over its nuclear ambitions.

On Monday, the European Union agreed sanctions banning all new oil contracts with Iran and freezing the assets of Iran’s central bank in the EU.

The foreign secretary said the EU’s “unprecedented” measures would put pressure on Iran to enter talks about its uranium enrichment programme.

“We are not planning to take military action in the Gulf,” he told MPs.

“We call on Iran to return to the negotiations which are at all times available to it,” Mr Hague continued.

The foreign secretary accused the Iranian regime of trying to hide its nuclear enrichment programme and said there was “no plausible civilian use” for it.

The urgent question came after Defence Secretary Philip Hammond warned that further military reinforcements could be deployed to the region following Iran’s threat to close the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions.

Mr Hague confirmed the possibility of sending further Royal Navy vessels to the area, but insisted the sanctions were designed to prevent war.

“This is not a set of actions designed to lead to any conflict but to lead us away from any conflict by increasing the pressure for a peaceful settlement of these disputes,” he said.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell warned against causing “a conflagration” in the Gulf.

He wanted to know if talks had been held with other countries that had “better relations” with Iran.

Mr Hague assured Sir Menzies that discussions had been held with countries such as Oman and Turkey about the issue.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Iran, was worried that major world powers would not back the ban on Iranian oil.

“My anxiety about these sanctions is that without China and Russia on board there will be the most substantial leakages,” he said.

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas claimed the sanctions could hit “ordinary Iranian citizens” rather than the regime’s leaders.

The foreign secretary sought to reassure her that Britain’s aim was the financing of Tehran’s nuclear programmes.

“These are unprecedented and wide-ranging measures which can have a wider effect,” he said.

“But that is better than the alternative of doing nothing or making a military conflict more likely,” Mr Hague concluded. BBC News