“A Russian ship believed to be carrying helicopters and missiles for Syria has been effectively stopped in its tracks off the coast of Scotland after its insurance was cancelled at the behest of the British government.

British security officials confirmed they had told Standard Club that providing insurance to the shipment was likely to be a breach of European Union sanctions against the Syrian regime.”

“Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson was speaking after making the first visit by a top US official in two decades.

He said his trip to Mogadishu was to acknowledge “significant progress” made against al-Shabab militants.

…the US envoy was in and out of the Somali capital in a matter of hours on Sunday, but during his key visit met the Somali president, prime minister and other members of the Transitional Federal Government.

Mr Carson said the US would impose sanctions on anyone standing in the way of the political process now under way.”

“Two students who staged a protest in 2010 to demand free education were sentenced to eight years and five months in prison yesterday by a Turkish court.

The students, Berna Yılmaz and Ferhat Tüzer, unfurled a banner reading: “We want free education, we will get it,” during a meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Roma citizens on March 14, 2010.

Berna Yılmaz and Ferhat Tüzer have already spent one and a half year in jail under arrest. They were released in October 2011, after the previous prosecutor of the case, Kasım İlimoğlu, requested the students’ acquittal, arguing their act was constitutional and fell within the limits of the freedom of expression. 

However, Prosecutor Adem Özcan, who replaced İlimoğlu following his appointment to the case, demanded on March 9 that the students, Ferhat Tüzer, Berna Yılmaz and another suspect Utku Aykar, be sentenced on charges of membership of a terrorist organization. Ferhat Tüzer, a mechanical engineering student at Trakya University, Berna Yılmaz, an anthropology student at Ankara University and the other suspect Utku Aykar opened a banner demanding free education during Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s meeting with the Roma community in March 2010. 

Tüzer and Yılmaz were subsequently arrested but later released after remaining behind bars for 18 months, while Aykar was tried without arrest.”

“Japan’s atomic industry over the next year plans to produce half a ton of plutonium, even though all of the nuclear power plants that could utilize the fuel source are disabled or inactive, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

The country’s considerable plutonium reserve, which is enough to build roughly 5,000 rudimentary nuclear bombs, has raised security concerns from among nonproliferation specialists.

The industry justifies its plutonium production plans by arguing the surplus stocks will eventually be needed when a number of planned reactors are finally built and activated. The future reactors will run on mixed-oxide fuel, which is a blend of uranium and plutonium, Federation of Electric Power Companies spokesman Kimitake Yoshida said.”

“The Istanbul Conference on Somalia, under the theme ‘Preparing Somalia’s Future: Goals for 2015,’ opens today with the participation of heads of state and representatives from more than 50 countries, and international organizations in cooperation with the United Nations. The conference will end on June 1.

The Istanbul conference is organized on the eve of rising opportunities of ending political, security, humanitarian instabilities and disputes that have continued for 21 years in Somalia.” 

“Simmering tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are threatening to erupt into a full-blown diplomatic showdown after Saudi authorities executed at least four Iranians for drug trafficking.                                                                                

In the latest in a series of spats between the two Persian Gulf neighbours, at loggerheads over Iran’s suspect nuclear programme, Tehran publicly accused Riyadh of ‘inhumane actions’ in carrying out the executions and warned of ‘repercussions’. “

“Russian President Vladimir Putin says he’ll talk with Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Beijing.

The Putin-Ahmadinejad talks in Beijing come as the Russian president prepares to host the so-called “P5+1” group — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany — this month in a round of negotiations on aimed at halting Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

The Kremlin made the announcement Sunday through Yuri Ushakov, a former ambassador to the United States who advises the Russian leader on foreign policy, RIA Novosti reported.”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin is beginning a three-day visit to China, with energy and foreign policy expected to dominate the agenda.

Mr Putin said ahead of the trip that he wanted to further boost booming bilateral trade, which reached $84bn (£55bn) last year.

The Syrian crisis is also expected to be discussed during the talks.

Some 17 major business and trade deals between Russia and China are expected to be signed in Beijing, Mr Putin’s aides say.

But it remains unclear whether this will include a long-awaited gas agreement that would allow Moscow to supply some 70bn cubic metres of gas to its neighbour.”

“Members of the under-25 demographic are calling out the country’s duopolistic media companies and politically cozy broadcasters as propaganda masters and kingmakers — while warning that the front-running candidate, the telegenic Cheshire Cat named Enrique Peña Nieto, is an empty suit.

The only problem with this narrative is that more young people support Peña Nieto than his challengers, according to the polls, which may make the protests here, led by urban university students, a well-meaning but ultimately meaningless blip.

Yet the stakes, for Mexico, and the United States, are high: a possible comeback by Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico with an autocratic combination of corruption and coercion for 71 years until it was tossed out in 2000. A month before the vote, Peña Nieto is up in the polls by double digits.”

“Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 20 percent ‘is our right’ and ‘is not a step towards a bomb,’ President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in an interview with the satellite television network France 24.

The enrichment activity, which world powers are trying to curb in fraught talks with Iran, ‘is one of our rights in terms of international law,’ Ahmadinejad said.

Ahmadinejad added that the heads of the UN nuclear watchdog should make world powers ‘provide us with uranium at a 20 percent enrichment level, but so far they have not done so.’

His remark in Farsi on Iran being supplied with 20 percent enriched uranium was rendered differently when translated into English for the channel.

Ahmadinejad hinted, however, that Iran could be open to stopping 20 percent enrichment — if world powers offered significant concessions.”