On Tax: Americans Renounce Citizenship

Thousands of Americans pack their suitcases, rip up their US passports and move permanently overseas to prevent Uncle Sam from taking their money evey year in anger over the latest tax hikes each year. In the first three quarters of 2012, more than 1,100 Americans renounced their citizenship and made their homes elsewhere, according to the Federal Register.

Available data does not yet include those who left in the fourth quarter, but it is on track to surpass the 1,781 Americans who relinquished their passports in 2011. And the number of Americans who ditched the US in 2011 was seven times higher than those who left in 2008.

With 6 million US citizens living abroad and continuing to pay US taxes, expatriates increasingly abandon their citizenship for the sake of saving cash. The US is the only industrialized country that requires its overseas citizens to pay income taxes – even if their income is generated abroad.

And for wealthy expatriates, the financial consequences of remaining a US citizen are most severe. Individuals earning more than $400,000 a year and married couples earning more than $450,000 a year will be paying an income tax rate of 39.6 percent – which is up from last year’s rate of 35 percent.

Those who earn more than $1 million annually will pay Uncle Sam about $170,341 more this fiscal year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Those who fear losing their savings frequently move to countries that do not tax their incomes.

One third of all billionaires that moved from the US to another country chose to go to ‘tax havens’ such as Switzerland, Bahamas, and Singapore, according to a 2012 study by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics.

While those who forego their citizenship will lose protection from the US government and could face difficulty in visiting the US, expatriates increasingly consider it worth it – including high-profile celebrities like 73-year-old American-born singer Tina Turner and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

Turner, who is worth an estimated $200 million, in January became a Swiss citizen and ditched her US citizenship. Saverin, whose net worth is an estimated $2.2 billion, holds Brazilian citizenship and lives in Singapore. Bloomberg estimates that the Facebook co-founder saved at least $67 million in federal income taxes by cutting his ties to the US.

But while the rich and famous make headlines for escaping the IRS’ grip on their finances, all American expatriates are subject to US taxes and are required by law to file estimated taxes and income, estate and gift tax returns. Some lawmakers are even trying to subject Americans to taxes even after giving up their citizenship. Sens.

Charles Schumer and Bob Casey last yearsuggestedthat Congress vote for a law that would force former US citizens to pay taxes for years after renouncing their citizenship – as well as ban them from ever returning to the US.

But in the short-term, ditching the US comes with its own financial penalties: Americans renouncing citizenship are required to pay an often-hefty exit fee. Those whose net worth is more than $2 million or whose annual income tax average is more than $145,000 are required to pay a 15 percent tax on capital gains above $641,000 and taxes on other assets including retirement accounts at the income rate of 39.6 percent.

As the only country to tax its citizens abroad, the US is pushing thousands of its citizens away.
“If you don’t mind where you live and the tax becomes excessive, then leaving might be a good choice,” Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, told Yahoo! Finance. “Countries have less of a hold on people. Governments have to raise more taxes, but they can’t go too far.”

G20 Leaders Pledge to Avoid Currency Wars

G20 Leaders Pledge to Avoid Currency Wars
By Alexander Bratersky

Leaders of the Group of 20 said Saturday that global economic growth remains weak despite government measures, but they agreed to avoid currency wars intended to stimulate the economy by devaluing their money.

A meeting of the group's finance ministers and central bankers was held in Moscow for the first time, due to Russia's current G20 presidency. The Manezh exhibition hall, a stone's throw away from the Kremlin, was the venue.

"We recognize that important risks remain and that global growth is still too weak, with unemployment remaining unacceptably high in many countries," read a joint communique published on the G20's official site Saturday.

The communique, signed by high-profile financial experts including former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, also called on countries to avoid "persistent exchange rate misalignments."

"We will refrain from competitive devaluation," the statement said.

Financial experts said the communique indirectly criticized Japan, which recently devalued the yen to encourage economic growth by keeping interest rates at almost zero.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici told reporters Saturday that G20 members had agreed not to engage in currency wars.

The commitment is in line with the position of Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, who has said exchange rates should be set by the market because Central Bank interference could lead to imbalances, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported Saturday.

G20 leaders also said they had agreed to establish a joint study group with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and United Nations to stimulate the financing of long-term investment.

The G20 is also seeking to increase governments' control over the global financial system.

"The pendulum has swung toward tougher financial regulation," Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak said Saturday, Prime reported.

The G20 meeting in Moscow was seen as a milestone for Russia, which is nursing the idea of turning Moscow into a key financial center despite purportedly poor corporate governance.

"A clear and enforced rule of law will be important for Russian financial markets to reach their full potential," Lawrence Goodman, head of the Center for Financial Stability, a U.S.-based financial think tank, told the Moscow Times in an e-mail interview Friday.

"Russian participation in the G20 and inclusion in the BRIC category of nations helps deepen its local financial markets," said Goodman, a former adviser to the U.S. treasury secretary.

"Although the clustering of Brazil, Russia, India and China is somewhat artificial," he said, "the four nations maintain the potential to shape future growth outside the advanced economies."

Moscow to hold beauty pegeant for Snakes

The Moscow Zoo plans to hold a "beauty pageant" for snakes from March to May to mark the year of the snake.

The zoo has already allocated about 2 million rubles ($66,000) for the event's organization, according to information on the official state procurement website.

A condition of the event is that it must be held in a pavilion with a total area of nearly 300 square meters.

In the statement, the maximum price of the contract was calculated based on the planned attendance of the zoo from March to mid-May, and that at least 36 different kinds of non-venomous snakes will be on display at the event.

Only the brightest, most beautiful and unique kinds of snakes will be showcased: Leptocercal ladder snakes, false smooth snakes, slim, ancestral, European, American and burrow snakes, sand snakes, South American bush snakes, king snakes, red king snakes and Madagascar snakes, as well as Australian and reticulated pythons, ordinary snakes and tree boas.

The zoo requires whoever wins the contract to ensure veterinarian services for the animals and any treatment they require, as well as to prepare admission tickets for the show and forms for voting. The tender winner will also have to provide all equipment and heating for the snakes' cages, as well as security for the event.

Awesome Wonders of Nature: Lions cause Traffic in Kenya

                              
Amateur South African snapper Gareth Jones was one of the drivers stuck in the traffic. He got out to photograph the unique scene at 6.40am.

Gareth, originally from South Africa but now living in Kenya, said: ‘I had only driven about 500 metres when the shapes of two big male lions could be seen in the road.
                             
                                  

‘They went into a ridiculous pose, with their rear ends up in the air and their faces down over some buffalo dung. They were trying to mask their smell so they could hunt undetected. ‘They both looked like they were enjoying themselves and it was an incredible start to the day.’

Gareth's images show the lions rolling in Buffalo dung to mask their scent in a bid to go undetected when hunting.

                               


But that was no consolation for commuters, who sat watching the ten minute display, before the lions left the road.

Gareth added: ‘After driving ahead of them, I began to take pictures of them walking up the road.‘As the lions were walking slowly, all the cars entering the main gate of the park were effectively blocked by their pace. Everyone was very patient.’
                       
                                   

Nairobi National Park opened in 1946. It is located just over four miles from the Kenyan capital’s city centre and its skyscrapers can be seen from within the protected area. The park is home to a wild range of species, including giraffes, leopards, wildebeest and hippos.

                                        

The closeness to the city proves a risk to the park as it is completely exposed to the pollution of the capital as well as threats from a growing population in need of land for farming and infrastructure.

How I saved OBJ, Anyim from impeachment, by Sen. Durojaiye

How I saved OBJ, Anyim from impeachment, by Sen. Durojaiye
By Bashir Adefaka
Senator Olabiyi Durojaiye clocked 80 two Fridays ago, precisely February 8, 2013.

An economist, seasoned administrator and former President of the Alumni of National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Kuru, which is the highest body for policy formulation and leadership training in the public sector of Nigeria, the Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State-born democrat put in 35 years of meritorious service in the public service including 28 years in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) where he rose to the position of Director. In 1992, he was an aspirant to the office of the President of Nigeria on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP). He later became an elected Senator of the Republic (1999-2003).Durojaiye, currently a constitutional lawyer, speaks, in this interview, on many issues. Excerpts:

During your time at the Senate, you were an activist-senator. What informed that?

It was my background and desire to serve and improve the lot of my people, to put things right. I remember telling that to some journalists when I called a press conference to dampen the struggle in the Senate around September 2002 about the acrimony between President Olusegun Obasanjo and the President of the Senate, Anyim Pius Anyim.

That time, the senators were in two groups, polarized; one working to impeach the other and I happened to know. I was a little bit indisposed when we were on vacation and I could not resume when others resumed because of not feeling well. But message got to me that the Senate, which had already broken into two groups, was planning a certain thing. So the group that wanted me to join them wanted me to do so to impeach Mr. President (Obasanjo).

I said, “No, I won’t be party to that. We should not impeach Mr. President and we should not encourage the President team to impeach the President of the Senate. Impeachment should not be on.”

Knowing the Senate for its versatility and brains at that time, how did you get to convince them to accept your position against their resolve considering the role they too believed Obasanjo was playing to the detriment of the legislative arm?

I told them the story of King Solomon’s first judgment when two women were reported to have slept and one of them killed her child in her process. The king said he would divide the dead child into two and divide the living child into two. The woman, whose child died, said, “Yes, fair enough. It will neither be hers nor mine.” The one whose child was alive said, “Ah! Great king, please, I cannot right here and watch my child slaughtered. It’s better you give the child to her. Maybe when the child grows, somehow the whole house will point him to someone who is his real mother.” King Solomon said, “Give that child to the woman who wanted to…”, that no one would like her child to be slaughtered in her presence.

The relevance of that story to my experience in the Senate and what I quoted on the floor of the Senate is that we who fought for democracy, we who really suffered eighteen and a half months solitary confinement with one meal a day in the military gulag, democracy meant more to us than those who, just by chance, because they didn’t suffer as much as we did, to be able to win election and get to the Senate. That we could not wait and allow democracy to fail in the third year after returning to it having struggled so much. Because for two powerful heads of two of the three arms of government to be at loggerheads was an indication to the military that we were not ready for democracy yet and so the military should come back. That was the implication and the way I saw it and I said no.

I tried to get that into them on the floor of the Senate but they didn’t want to shift ground and so I called a press conference. It was around September 2002. That was what quelled the movement at that time for the Senate group to impeach President Olusegun Obasanjo and the President group in the Senate to impeach the Senate President Anyim and his deputy, Ibrahim Mantu. It was my press conference that saved the situation because the media and the whole nation came to the fact that, “Yes, we cannot afford any impeachment now.” Whereas they were friends; up to the beginning of that year, both Pius Anyim and Obasanjo were very close. I just give you that as an example in answer to your question that what made me more active at the Senate was the fact that we really suffered for democracy.

I also wrote the report on Odi, the sledge hammer on Odi, it was the Oyi of Oyi, Chuba Okadigbo, that was Senate President at that time. He led the team and he brought me to be part of it. And he said I should please write the report of what I saw. I wrote the report chastising the government of Obasanjo that “that was overkill. You were killing a mosquito with a sledge hammer.” It was too much. It was I who also raised a motion on the floor of the Senate that unless government paid the arrears of pensioners, we senators would refuse to accept our salaries at the end of that month. That also endeared our Senate at that time to the people of Nigeria that we were ready to make sacrifice and that jolted the government into action. So, you could imagine now the racketeering going on, on pension funds which has seen pensioners’ dues being looted by few greedy and wicked public servants.

If you were in the Senate today, what would your new motion be, looking at the kind of judgment a court recently gave on a pension thief?

If I were in the Senate today, I would call for heavy punishment for such people. It doesn’t need much talk. It is simple. Stealing in greedy and wicked manner public and pensioners’ funds, as it has been witnessed now, should attract heavy punishment. Back to where we were, another thing that really made me active at our Senate was the move to impeach a state government and declare an emergency in the state. There was the governor of a state that was not in good terms with some powerful people in the Senate and there was a move to teach him a lesson. Unknown to me, people had been lobbied to support the motion and, on the floor of the Senate when the issue was raised, I just raised my hand and raised a strong argument about why Nigeria should not indulge in any declaration of state of emergency anywhere, that the first of it they did was in the Western Region in 1962. We were just consequently coming out of the events Pa Anthony Enahoro predicted at that time that we were letting loose a chain of events the end of which nobody knew and nobody knew really because, it was always one coup after another until 1999 when we returned to democracy.

I said,’ so, now, you want to have another emergency? What does the Constitution say about situation of declaring state of emergency, either imminent situation of war or total breakdown of law and order and such serious security situation?’ There was another very outspoken and highly respected senator, Dan Sadau, who supported my motion, which broke the back of the camel (laughs).

Taking another retrospective view of the Senate, 1998-2003, that you belonged to, it appeared those of you in the opposition parties were always having your way. How did you do it or was it because of the respect they had for some of you?

It was the combination of all that because, at that time, there were really very experienced people. Look at it, those of us in our set; Okadigbo was already a national figure before he came to the Senate. The same thing Evans Enwerem. They were all well known people in their areas. Now in our own place, in Ogun State in particular, Ogun produced three of the first eleven: Professor Olabinto; Femi Okurohunmu, a very brilliant young man and my humble self. From Lagos, look at Wahab Dosunmu. He was in Senate before and later a minister; Adeseye Ogunlewe, very brilliant technocrat, was permanent secretary before coming to the Senate. You know, people really had garnered much experience and some of us were veterans in the struggle to oust the military. These were the people and we found ourselves in the Senate at that time.

The level of maturity, the level of academic background and so on; if not higher than what we have now, it is certainly not lower than what we have been having. And then if you look at the average age and experience too, I was already in my 60s when I was in the Senate. Today, we have people in their 40s and so, they haven’t garnered our kind of experience. I was Director, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), President of National Institution of Policy and Strategy Studies Alumni, which was an experience I brought into the Senate. That is not what it is now. Except a very few people like our contemporary, David Mark; very few, you can point them. With due respect to them, I’m not saying this to slight them. Look at Ike Nwachukwu. He was secretary-general of ANI, Alumni of National Institute, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs before, he was governor of Imo State and he was a General in the Army. Look at all that accumulated experience.

Whatever you may say about this political maverick, Arthur Nzeribe, he was a very experienced politician.
These were the people we were together in the Senate of our time. As to the opposition, the ANPP, I have just told you a man, Dan Sadau, very brilliant elderly person from Sokoto and he was an ANPP man. So, whenever some of us combined to speak on an issue, our colleagues in the PDP didn’t joke with it. I remember there was one of us from Adamawa, I can’t remember his name just now but he was much younger than Jubril Aminu. He said, “Oga, how could you think this out?” And I remember the day I sang Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s song on the floor of the Senate in January of 2002 where he sang, “Trouble sleeps, yanga go wake am. Wetin you go find? Na wahalaaa you go find.”

There must have been a serious issue that necessitated that because, as a Nigerian leader of Yoruba extraction, using songs as a means of buttressing points are not far-fetched. What was the issue?
At that time, the friendship between the President of the Republic, Obasanjo, and the President of the Senate, Anyim Pius Anyim, was at its peak. There was this Electoral Bill that we made some amendments to. Somehow between our approval and the time of President’s assent, there was an alteration and then the bill came back to the Senate for debate. Furious debate. Then I said the honourable thing was to call that bill back, repeal it and re-enact it back to the way we wanted it to be. I said that was the only way out. If you do not do it that way, you aren’t ready.

Then the Senate President, Anyim, out of sympathy to his party at that time, said,’ no, no, no, there could be a way out,’ and I said, “Look, let me sing the Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s song for you” ;and I sang that song on the floor of the house (laughs). It was before the end of that year that the relationship between the two of them; Obasanjo and Anyim, went sour. And what I said in January, I said it again in September. All within nine months in 2002. These are the real reasons my name was prominent in the Senate at that time. I still remember now that the very first motion that was unanimously approved on the floor of that Senate (1999-2003) was moved by me.

What motion and what was it about?

That was in June 1999 when we were newly sworn-in. The very first call of President Obasanjo administration was to kill the queues at filling stations. That was the first of his achievements, I can remember. Before he was sworn-in, everybody was suffering at filling stations from long queues. I didn’t remember how he did it but, within a month of his assuming office, he cleared all that. He was sworn-in on May 29, 1999 and, within a month, the queues disappeared. Fuel was made available. We were just enjoying that return to normalcy when the trade unions; two of them in the petroleum sector, NUPENG and the other, gave notice that they were going on strike in July of 1999. I think it was about something due to them that was not paid. They said they would go on strike if that was not done.

It was about a week that the newspapers had been reporting it that I moved a motion in the Senate that we should intervene and prevail on government to talk to them and probably meet their request so that we did not revert to the suffering we just got out of. The motion was unanimously approved. That was within the first three weeks of our assumption of office. That was what sold me out to the media that this is the man whose opinion will carry weight in this Senate. It was so too with some of my colleagues who were also moving such wonderful motions that really worked.

What were the challenges?

In all, people were criticizing us that we were not militant enough in opposition to the government.

And what was your reaction to that?

And I said,’ look, we are here to construct not to break’. Breaking that government would be breaking democracy. So, that we should just criticize the government and give alternatives to them about what they should do. Like I did that January 2002 when I asked the house to recall the Electoral Bill, repeal it and re-enact it the way we wanted it to be. I think the Alliance for Democracy (AD),my party, was already planning what they wanted to do in 2003 but ours as senators was just to do what was necessary.

It is also important to look at some of the things you have not spoken about. NADECO; what was the General Mohammed Marwa connection, which people said almost cost him his life following the series of bomb attacks allegedly masterminded by the Head of State, General Sani Abacha’s Strike Force? Was he truly a member?

No, no, no. As far as I remember, Marwa was not part of NADECO and I don’t think he claimed to be.

Why then did your activities as NADECO thrive under his watch as military administrator of Lagos?

Well, he could be a sympathizer of NADECO and he might be a fellow traveler of NADECO, that is sharing our aspiration to put an end to military rule and realization of June 12, 1993 election result and so on. Yes, we had many sympathizers and supporters and they formed their own enclaves and their own groups in various parts of the South West. And those days, South South too and some pockets of it in the South East.
But the real NADECO, those who we called NADECO, attended NADECO meetings presided over by Pa Anthony Enahoro, there was no time we were ever up to 30. There was no meeting of NADECO that we held that people were up to 30 and I was there throughout until the time I was kidnapped (laughs) and put in Abacha prison. The highest we ever had was between 20 and 22. When we were many, 25; people who were NADECO, we could count them on the tip of our fingers.

And those were the few people that shook…the whole nation. But somehow the impact we made was so strong that there was spillover in other parts of the country. There was a time when we knew that government had planted moles in our midst, we were always minding now what we were doing. The number of those who were attending our meetings was reduced to eleven. In fact it was reduced to nine with one accredited to Papa Ajasin, the real head of the movement but because of age, he was already in his 80s and distance, he was based in Owo, Ondo State. And so he could not be coming to Lagos for the meetings. So he was asked to nominate one person he could trust to be in the NADECO exclusive group. That was number ten. The number eleven person was the nominee of MKO Abiola. Somebody he could trust to represent him and pass information across to him because at that time he was in prison. And do you know who he nominated?

I don’t know.

Olabiyi Durojaiye (laughs). I was the one MKO Abiola nominated to represent his interest at the inner-caucus of NADECO. So, I was one of the first eleven of NADECO.

So Chief MKO Abiola was part of NADECO even from prison?

Definitely he was but, through his wife, Kudirat Abiola. She never attended our meetings but she was being briefed and she was a fearless fighter in her own rights. But the information we gathered later was that there was a mole planted in our midst and you could see the mole in her aide. Because they were asking, ‘This lady hasn’t got that kind of education to be drafting the kind of speeches she was giving. Somebody must be drafting her speeches for her and pointing for her the way to go’. Most times they mentioned my name.

And were you?

No, the truth is, Kudirat never asked me to write anything for her. She was just committed on her own and was working. I was not aware of any of those things. If anybody was to draft anything for her or to tell her what to do, I was likely to be that person because of the closeness. Abiola’s house is just across here (Opebi, Ikeja). Now, that was the report that was getting to government. They sent warnings to me and I received anonymous warnings too. There was one of the top security officers when we went to a meeting and he called me to one side and said to me, “Everyday we have report that you are one of the brains behind NADECO and we respect you.” The man is still alive and I don’t want to mention his name. He said, “We respect you and we like you.” I had been their President of the Alumni of National Institute (ANI). He said to me, “Don’t let us hate you. General Abacha is worried about this group that wants to destabilize the country.”

I told him that I did not plan to destabilize the country but that I operated purely on principle of justice and fair play. And that if Abacha had won an election and MKO Abiola were to be a soldier and denied him the mandate, I will fight Abiola in favour of Abacha to restore his mandate. I said that the military should not have allowed Abiola to contest that election. Maybe they did not expect him to win because, I said, once they allowed him to contest the election and he won, they should allow him to rule.

Was it as a result of your not shifting ground that Abacha ordered that you should be picked up and sent to prison?

That was the conclusion anybody following what was going on could arrive at. They had been giving me anonymous calls and one of the top security officers had confronted me physically. Yet I did not change position. There was this very first meeting that Fredrick Fasehun called when he was about to establish the OPC, Oodua People’s Congress. He just felt that the way things were going, we had to use some form of militancy. We got into that meeting, which was held outside Lagos in a town in Remo. Immediately I arrived at that meeting, I told Fasehun that there are some faces there I was not familiar with, that they were faces of young people who looked like students and I asked him, “Are you sure these are not on the payroll of government because what we are doing amounts to treason?” If we must use militancy, it amounts to treason. I said those young people looked strange to me and I asked if he was sure of them. He said they were very good people defending our own terrain. I said okay.

Immediately I arrived home from that meeting, that same day, it was Easter Monday, and that time we had this telephone box with tape recorder; playing back my recorded voice messages I heard, “Welcome back. We have been watching your movement.”

Was it that serious?

I’m telling you and it went on, “Be careful which company you keep because we are watching you.” To me, that was too strange a coincidence. I just returned from a meeting and that was recorded telephone voice message here. Then I told Fasehun, “I don’t think I will like to continue with you in this thing.” He had my support initially but I didn’t take part in any of those things. I got fully involved in NADECO because NADECO did not have anything of militancy. All NADECO had was using the press and arousing public opinions that somebody who had won an election should be made to rule. That was what i belonged to.

Obama pushes for Gun Control in Chicago

US President Barack Obama renewed calls for stricter gun control laws in his hometown of Chicago. Chicago has been plagued with series of deadly shootings and gun menace for a long time.

Speaking before Hyde Park Academy students in their navy uniform shirts in Chicago, Obama said 65 children were killed by gun violence last year in Chicago. "That's the equivalent of a Newtown every four months,'' Obama reiterated.

"This is not just a gun issue,'' Obama said. "It's also an issue of the kinds of communities that we're building, and for that we all share responsibility as citizens to fix it". As a result, he said: "Too many of our children are being taking away from us.''

Recent shooting victims have included Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old drum majorette gunned down less than 2km from Obama's home just days after she performed at the president's inauguration in Washington.

Gun control was not on Obama's agenda in his first term, but the president responded quickly to the December shooting of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

He is pushing measures including background checks for all gun purchases and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, even as both sides in the debate doubt he'll be able to achieve the full package.

Gun advocates have pushed back hard as always, arguing that such restrictions are an infringement on the second amendment of the constitution, which states that citizens have the right to bear arms.

Nuclear Waste Leak in the United States

                        
           Hanford nuclear site, Washington state (Google Image)           AFP Photo

US officials said one of the most contaminated waste sites in America is leaking nuclear waste. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation stores material from the production of atomic weapons, in tanks which have outlived their 20-year lifespan.

The nuclear leak is the first confirmed case of this type since the federal government’s introduction of a security programme in 2005 to dispose of content  from exposed single-shell tanks.

The US Department of Energy announced that one of Hanford ‘s 177 radioactive waste tanks is disposing up to 300 gallons per year.  The leaks have come from Tank T-111, built between 1943 and 1944, now holding some 447,000 gallons of highly radioactive slurry left from plutonium production of  nuclear arms.

"I am alarmed about this on many levels," Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee  said at a news conference. He said it is not only about Hanford alone but also of other sites in the United States.

Other tanks on the site are now been examined and currently there is “no immediate public health risk,” the governor said.

Hanford became the site of the first full-scale plutonium reactor in the world after it was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project in the nuclear race. Atomic material produced there was used in the Nagasaki bomb in 1945.

An estimated 1 million gallons of waste, leaked from the site over 70 years, threatens the local environment of the Columbia River.

The US Department of Energy is trying to deal with the problem by transferring the waste from 149 potentially unsafe single wall tanks to 28 double-wall units, but space is running out. More than 60 of the tanks are thought to have leaked over time.

Erection of an estimated $12 billion plant is running behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The plant is designed to turn radioactive waste into glass logs through a vitrification process.

"We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now," said Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge. "We've got a problem. This is big."

According to the Seattle Times, around 10 percent of the 586-square-mile facility is contaminated.

Materials including tritium, chromium nitrate and strontium-90  have penetrated the river, according to the state Department of Ecology. But no unsafe levels have been found in farm crops in the region according to the department.

Fans Ready to Pay Fortune for Titanic's Replica Maiden Voyage

                              
A handout picture received from Southampton City Council on April 4, 2012 shows the Titanic leaving Southampton on her ill-fated maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. (AFP Photo)


Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, who plans to build a modern replica of the legendary Titanic cruise ship by 2016, has received an “overwhelming” response from people around the world willing to be the first paying passengers.

A half-dozen people have even offered $1 million or more to be on the maiden voyage, officials from Palmer's company Blue Star Line announced at a press conference.

Raymond Tam, Director of Asia Operations for Blue Star Line said "Many people when they think about Titanic II, they think about the romantic story of Rose and Jack, Romeo and Juliet, so I am sure many people can associate themselves one way or the other with Titanic. So I guess our target has no limit on boundaries.”

The global launch of the Titanic II project is scheduled for February 26, according to the Blue Star Line website. It will be held in New York on the retired aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, not far from the original Titanic’s would-be port of destination. Details concerning the project are expected to be released at the event.

Preliminary plans and drawings of the Titanic II were revealed in July 2012. The ship is being designed by the Finland-based Deltamarin engineering company, and will be constructed by China's CSC Jinling Shipyard company.

The upgraded version of the world’s most famous cruise liner will have the same dimensions as its ill-fated original: It will be 270 meters long (885 feet), 53 meters high, and will weigh 40,000 tons. The ship will have 840 rooms and nine decks, and retain the first, second and third-class divisions of the original.

However, the replica will also be equipped with cutting-edge technology and the newest navigation and safety systems. The ship will also be wider, its bridge will have greater visibility over the bow, and this time there will be lifeboats for everyone.

Once completed, the Titanic replica will first sail from China to Southampton, and then carry passengers to New York along the original ship’s 1912 route. The Titanic was the world’s largest and most luxurious ocean liner, but it sank 100 years ago during its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, killing around 1500 passengers.

Palmer is not the first to set the ambitious goal of recreating the Titanic. In 1998, the same project was announced by South African business mogul Sarel Gous. It was abandoned in 2006 over lack of public interest and investment.

                      
This handout diagram provided by The Blue Star Line on July 17, 2012 shows the preliminary plans and drawings for the Titanic II. (AFP Photo/The Blue Star Line)

"No power can stop Iran if it wants Nuclear Weapons' -Ayatollah Khamenei

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said his country was not seeking nuclear weapons but added that if Iran ever decided to build them, no “world power” could alter the trend.

The supreme leader whose 2005 edict banning nuclear weapons is regarded as binding in Iran, told a group of visitors to his home in Tehran, the capital, that Iran is in favour of the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons.

“We believe that nuclear weapons must be eliminated,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “We don’t want to build atomic weapons. But if we didn’t believe so and intended to possess nuclear weapons, no power could stop us.” His comments were posted on his Web site, Khamenei.ir.

American officials say they believe that Ayatollah Khamenei exercises full control over Iran’s nuclear programme. He had earlier rejected direct talks with the United States when he said Washington was “pointing a gun at Iran”.

He called on the United States to show “logic” while talking to Iran. He and other Iranian leaders have often emphasized that before any talks can take place, Western sanctions must be lifted and the West must respect what they say is Iran’s right to a nuclear programme monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“This is the only way to interact with the Islamic republic of Iran, and in that case the US administration would receive a proper response” from Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei said.

He pointed to American-devised sanctions, to which a new set of measures was added this month, as the prime example of why negotiations between Iran and the United States would fail.

“They seek the surrender of the Iranian nation,” Ayatollah Khamenei said of the United States. If negotiations are a sign of good will, he asked how talks could occur in the face of the current sanctions. He said the sanctions do not show goodwill, hence, Iran will not bow.

“They naïvely think that the nation has been exhausted by the sanctions and will therefore yearn for negotiations with the US,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

In a separate part of his speech, he sharply criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, who recently traded accusations during a public session of Parliament. Mr. Ahmadinejad caused an uproar by releasing a video of what he said were secret business dealings involving Mr. Larijani’s brother Fazel. During the same session, Mr. Larijani led the parliamentary effort to impeach one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s ministers.

“People want psychological and moral peace, and I explicitly say that the event was not fitting to Islamic republic’s code of conduct,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, condemning both the release of the video and the impeachment effort.

“This event made me feel sad,” said the ayatollah. He has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 with much power and influence.