Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program are working. And they should get a chance to succeed, he added. Gates said many nations are “united in telling Iran what it needs to do with respect to its nuclear program.” The United States and its allies have led efforts to pass two U.N. Security Council resolutions punishing Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, which can develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has started enriching small amounts of uranium gas at its underground nuclear plant and is running more than 1,300 of the centrifuges used in the process, according to a U.N. nuclear watchdog document obtained Wednesday. The confidential document – a letter to Iranian officials from a senior staff member at the International Atomic Energy Agency – also protests an Iranian decision to prevent agency inspectors from visiting the country’s heavy water facility that, when built, will produce plutonium.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority upheld a nationwide ban Wednesday on a controversial abortion procedure. For the first time since the court established a woman’s right to an abortion in 1973, the justices said the Constitution permits a nationwide prohibition on a specific abortion method. The court’s liberal justices, in dissent, said the ruling chips away at abortion rights.
Soldiers on Wednesday found Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell’s body buried in a shallow grave in a dry river bed in the area of the northern Philippines where she was hiking by herself. Police said they believed foul play was involved. Ironically, the last entry in her Internet blog said she was “buhay pa,” a Filipino phrase for “still alive.” The Jan. 13 posting, which detailed her experiences surviving a typhoon, explained that she had adopted the phrase soon after arriving in the country two years ago, calling it the most familiar response when Filipinos are asked how they are doing
