Indigenous Satellite Ready

TEHRAN, Feb. 4--Iran launched on Monday a research rocket and unveiled its first major space center, in the presence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The president said the launch of the first space research center would be a great step toward serving mankind and mark Iran’s progress, IRNA reported.
“We witness today that Iran has taken its first step in space very firmly, precisely and with awareness. We need to have an active and effective presence in space,“ Ahmadinejad said in a speech.
“Building and firing a satellite is a big and precious achievement.“
The country’s first space center comprises of the Omid (Hope), Iran’s first homemade research satellite designed and built by Iranian experts. The rocket marks the orbit for the launch of Omid.
Iran has been pursuing a nascent space program in the last few years and an Iranian satellite was put into orbit by a Russian rocket in October 2005.
The space center has been designed to send the Islamic Republic’s first homemade research satellite into orbit in the near future.
State television showed images of a large rocket strongly resembling Iran’s longer range missile Shahab-3 waiting to be fired on a mobile launcher.
The television did not disclose where the space station was situated, but ISNA news agency said it was in a desert area in northern Semnan province.
The Russian-launched satellite Sina-1 was Iran’s first--and so far only--probe to be launched into space, and was described by the Iranian press as pursuing research and telecommunications. Iran has said it plans to build and launch several more satellites over the next three years.
The achievement was widely appreciated in the western media.
Reuters quoted London-based defense analyst Paul Beaver that Iran was making technological progress.
“I think it is yet another indication that Iran’s technology is moving very quickly up the scale,“ he said.
BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran says it is a highly symbolic moment for the launch, on the 29th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
Patriotic music was aired on TV as it reported the story.
Minister of Science, Research and Technology Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi said the inauguration of Iran’s domestic aerospace center was a strong backup of the country’s Islamic system. Speaking on the sidelines of the center’s inauguration ceremony, the minister referred to the event as another “scientific breakthrough for Iranian scientists“.
Zahedi referred to the center’s establishment as an ’honor’ for Iranians in the field of technology.

DIMONA,
Occupied Palestine, Feb. 4--A Palestinian carried out the first suicide bombing in Israel in a year on Monday, killing a woman in a town where a top-secret nuclear weapon plant is located.
Police said they prevented a second blast in Dimona’s shopping center by shooting dead an accomplice before he could detonate an explosives belt, Reuters reported.
A Gaza-based source in President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction said the “Army of Palestine“ wing of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades launched the attack along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
A Fatah official in the West Bank denied Al-Aqsa involvement. The conflicting statements reflected divisions in Fatah as leader Abbas pursues US-backed peace talks with Israel for the first time in seven years.
Two other militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, praised the bombing as a blow against “Israeli occupation“ and retaliation for Israeli attacks.
Young supporters of Fatah handed out flowers and candy to passing cars in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to celebrate.
Abbas condemned the Dimona bombing but was also critical of an earlier military raid by Israel in the occupied West Bank.
Police said the suicide bomber blew himself up in Dimona’s busy commercial center, killing himself and the Israeli woman.
“The second man was shot in the head as he tried to set off his bomb belt,“ said Yossi Porianta, the police chief in Israel’s southern Negev region.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said 10 people were wounded.
Israel’s top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor, which is widely believed to have produced atomic bombs, is located in a heavily-guarded compound on the outskirts of the town.

TEHRAN, Feb. 4--Iranian industrialists on Monday launched the production line of a new low-consumption car engine dubbed TU3.
About 50,000 such engines will be produced in the first phase of the project and annual production capacity will reach 400,000 engines at the beginning of the next Iranian year (to start on March 20).
Iran has the capacity of manufacturing more than one million vehicles per annum.
Ali Akbar Mehrabian, minister of mines and industries, said in the opening ceremony that the low-consumption engines, belonging to the Peugeot family, will be produced under the supervision of France.
“Apart from France, these engines are also produced in Brazil and China. So far, two millions low-consumption engines have been produced in other countries,“ he said.
The minister added that Iranian carmakers have focused their attention on global markets.
He said Iranian auto-manufacturers are ready to boost exports to Latin American countries, including Venezuela.
“We are able to provide Venezuelans with 200,000 cars on a yearly basis,“ he said.
Mehrabian also inaugurated the assembly line of Peugeot SLX in Iran Khodro Industrial Group, which also produces Peugeot 405 sedans.

MINNEAPOLIS, USA, Feb. 4--Exhausted White House hopefuls launched one last frenzied day of campaigning before a 24-state “Super Tuesday“--the biggest one-day White House nominating contest in history.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting neck-and-neck in the Democratic showdown, while John McCain looked set to take a firm grip on the Republican party’s nomination, AFP reported.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll out on Monday had Clinton narrowly leading Obama 49 percent to 46 percent, within the poll’s 4.5 percent margin of error.
The same poll had McCain far ahead, 44 percent against 29 percent for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee trailing on 18 percent.
“We want somebody with a few battle scars, who’s been tested, who’s ready to go the distance against whatever the Republicans decide to do,“ former first lady Clinton told cheering supporters at a rally in Minnesota on Sunday.
“They’ve been after me for 16 years and much to their dismay, I am still here,“ declared Clinton, who is seeking to become America’s first woman president.
Obama argued that Clinton’s reputation meant he was a better candidate to take on the Republicans.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Republicans consider her a polarizing figure,“ he said on CBS television.
Later the Illinois senator fired up a 20,000 crowd in the eastern state of Delaware and parried Clinton’s latest attacks.
“Super Tuesday“ states account for more than half the delegates at party conventions in August and September, which formally appoint nominees for the presidential election in November.
There are 22 Democratic contests and 21 on the Republican side, with 19 states hosting nominating clashes for both parties.

HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 4--Raids by NATO and Afghan troops against Taliban insurgents in southern and southwestern Afghanistan killed several civilians, among them children, local officials said Monday.
Ten people were killed in southwestern Farah province and two others were killed in southern Helmand province, they said, AFP reported.
Authorities from Farah gave conflicting figures for the number of civilians killed.
The strike in Farah late Sunday, involving ground and air forces, took place in Bakwa district, which has seen a series of attacks by fighters with the Taliban movement, in government between 1996 and 2001.
The governor of Bakwa district said that two women and three children were among the dead and only one Taliban fighter was killed.
“A Taliban commander had been invited to the house,“ said Khan Agha. “In the operation, nine people were killed, which includes two women and three kids.“
The rest were men.