By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 38 minutes ago
A large Israeli military exercise this month may have been aimed at showing Jerusalem's abilities to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
In a substantial show of force, Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean early this month, Pentagon officials said Friday.
Israel's military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran.
Russia's foreign minister Friday warned against the use of force on Iran, saying there is no proof it is trying to build nuclear weapons with a program that Tehran says is for generating power.
U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the sensitive matter for the record.
"They have been conducting some large-scale exercises — they live in a tough neighborhood," one U.S. official said, though he offered no other recent examples.
The big exercise the first week of June was impossible to miss and may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said.
The New York Times quoted officials Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of rescuing downed pilots.
"It was noticed that a significant exercise took place — dozens and dozens of aircraft participated," one U.S. officials said Friday. "We watch globally everyday, and this was noted."
A second U.S. defense official said the maneuver could be taken as a demonstration that Israel is serious about the need to challenge Iran's nuclear program — and could be prepared to do so militarily. "That's one of the assessments you could make out of the exercise," the official said.
Asked to comment, the Israeli military issued a statement saying only that the Israeli air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel."
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev offered no comment beyond the military's statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he prefers that Iran's nuclear ambitions be halted by diplomatic means, but has pointedly declined to rule out military action. Bush administration officials have said the same.
In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published on Wednesday, Olmert said the current international sanctions against Iran would probably not succeed alone, saying there were "many things that can be done economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily."
Asked if Israel was capable of taking military action against Iran, Olmert said, "Israel always has to be in a position to defend itself against any adversary and against any threat of any kind."
Israeli military analyst Martin Van Creveld of Jerusalem's Hebrew University said military preparations for a possible attack are indeed under way.
"Israel has been talking about this possibility for a long time, that it would not take an Iranian nuclear weapon lying down. And it has been practicing the operation or operations for a long time," he said.
But though an Israeli strike would likely be able to "paralyze the most important Iranian nuclear installations," it probably wouldn't be able to destroy the program entirely, Van Creveld said. "I would be very surprised if Israel can really knock out every part of this program, which by all accounts appears to be large and well concealed and well dispersed," he said.
There are precedents for unilateral Israeli action in such cases. In 1981, Israeli jets bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility to end dictator Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. And last September Israel bombed a facility in Syria that U.S. officials have said was a nuclear reactor being constructed with North Korean assistance.
A U.S. intelligence report released late last year concluded that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program, but Israeli intelligence believes that assessment is incorrect and that work is continuing.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Iran should be engaged in dialogue and encouraged to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency.
Lavrov made the statement when asked to comment on an Israeli Cabinet member's statement earlier this month that Israel could attack Iran if it does not halt its nuclear program.
"I hope the actual actions would be based on international law," Lavrov said. "And international law clearly protects Iran's and anyone else's territorial integrity."
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Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman contributed to this report from Jerusalem and Vladimir Isachenkov contributed from Moscow.
Mon Jun 16, 9:42 PM
CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.
Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.
Under the Fisheries Act, it's illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as "tailings impoundment areas."
That means mining companies don't need to build containment ponds for toxic mine tailings.
CBC News visited two examples of Schedule Two lakes. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Vale Inco company wants to use a prime destination for fishermen known as Sandy Pond to hold tailings from a nickel processing plant.
In northern B.C., Imperial Metals plans to enclose a remote watershed valley to hold tailings from a gold and copper mine. The valley lies in what the native Tahltan people call the "Sacred Headwaters" of three major salmon rivers. It also serves as spawning grounds for the rainbow trout of Kluela Lake, which is downstream from the dump site.
Vale Inco's proposal was the subject of a public meeting on June 10 in Long Harbour, N.L. Billed as a "public consultation" on the proposal, the meeting was attended by government officials, mining executives, environmentalists and fishermen.
"Lakes are often the best way for mine tailings to be contained," said Elizabeth Gardiner, vice-president for technical affairs for the Mining Association of Canada.
"In some cases, particularly in Canada, with this kind of topography and this number of natural lakes and depressions and ponds ... in the end it's really the safest option for human health and for the environment," she said.
But Catherine Coumans, spokeswoman for the environmental group Mining Watch, said the federal government is making it too easy. She said federal officials are increasingly using the obscure Schedule Two regulations to quietly reclassify lakes and other waters as tailings dumps.
"Something that used to be a lake - or a river, in fact, they can use rivers - by being put on this section two of this regulation is no longer a river or a lake," she said. "It's a tailings impoundment area. It's a waste disposal site. It's an industrial waste dump."
Coumans said the procedure amounts to a subsidy to the industry and enables mines to get around the Fisheries Act.
"What Canadians need to know is that this year, from March 2008 to March of 2009, eight lakes are going to be subject to being put on Schedule Two, which is just about every mine that is going ahead this year is looking around, looking for the nearest lake to dump its waste into."
A local environmentalist who attended the Long Harbour meeting, Chad Griffiths, said of Sandy Pond: "It's easy enough to consider just one lake as just one lake, as a needed sacrifice, right? But it's not one lake ... It's a trend. It's an open season on Canadian water."
A test case: the Red Chris Mine in northwestern B.C.
Last fall, a Federal Court judge ruled that federal bureaucrats acted illegally in trying to fast-track the Red Chris copper and gold mine without a full and public environmental review.
The decision put the project on hold, but late last week, the Federal Appeals Court reversed the decision, paving the way for federal officials to declare lakes to be dumps without public consultation.
Imperial Metals said in a release Monday that federal authorities "are now authorized to issue regulatory approvals for the Red Chris project to proceed," although the matter could still be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
In the earlier decision, Justice Luc Martineau overturned the decision by federal officials to skip a public review, saying it "has all the characteristics of a capricious and arbitrary decision which was taken for an improper purpose."
He also found those officials "committed a reviewable error by deciding to forgo the public consultation process which the project was statutorily mandated to undergo."
The dump site includes two small lakes in a Y-shaped valley. Imperial Metals plans to build three dams to contain mine tailings within the valley. But environmentalists say there is no way to stop effluent leaking downstream in groundwater.
Jim Bourquin of the Cassiar Watch Society, a conservation group, said Kluela Lake, immediately downstream from the site, is one of the best trout fishing lakes in northern B.C.
"This is a precedent-setting decision by the federal government to start using fish-bearing habitat as a waste management area," Bourquin said. "It's totally bizarre for the federal government to come here and say that this Y-shaped valley up here is no longer a fish habitat, it's no longer sacred headwaters, it's just a waste dump site."
But Steve Robertson, exploration manager for Imperial Metals, told CBC News the dump site will be sealed and that the economic benefits of the planned Red Chris mine will be enormous.
"This is a project that can bring a lot of good jobs, long-term jobs, well-paying jobs to a community that desperately needs it." Robertson said.
He added that the total investment over the 25-year life of the mine would be about half a billion dollars and that the risk to the environment will be carefully managed.
"Tailings are part of the mining process," Robertson said, "and, if treated properly, if they're built into a proper structure and kept submerged, they should be able to withstand the test of time and actually not pose a detriment to the environment."
But James Dennis, a 76-year-old elder of the local Tahltan people, told CBC News he doesn't buy that.
"We want it stopped," said Dennis, who lives in the native village of Iskut, 18 kilometres northwest of the mine site. "We want to stop the mine ... The animals will be drinking that water and they'll all be polluted too."
"Once they do the mine, they're going to leave, and we're the people who are going to live with that. Not me, but my grandchildren, the small little kids like this. That's who's going to live with the pollution."
TOCHIGI, Japan (Reuters) - Honda kicked off production on Monday of its newest fuel-cell car, as the car-maker gears up for the battle to dominate the market for next-generation vehicles.
Honda's FCX Clarity, a sporty-looking fuel-cell saloon, came off the production line in Tochigi, north of Tokyo. The assembly line is Honda's first to be dedicated to building fuel-cell vehicles.
The FCX Clarity will be sold through a newly established fuel-cell vehicle dealership network in the United States from July, Honda said. In Japan, sales are slated to start in autumn.
The car-maker is targeting lease sales of about 200 FCX Clarity cars in the first three years in the two countries combined.
"Fuel-cell vehicles, which don't use fossil fuels and don't produce carbon dioxide, are necessary for the environment. We would like to make them more popular," Honda Chief Executive Takeo Fukui told reporters.
Fuel-cell vehicles are widely considered the ultimate longer-term alternative to today's conventional cars as they run on an inexhaustible and cheaper source of fuel -- hydrogen, have no harmful exhaust emissions, and do not compromise driving performance.
The main hurdles for their proliferation are a lack of fuelling stations and the high cost of development.
Among the first five customers for the FCX Clarity are actress Jamie Lee Curtis and U.S. filmmaker Christopher Guest, Honda said.
The vehicle, which uses a lithium-ion battery, can run 620 km (385 miles) on a single fuelling as measured under Japan's fuel efficiency test method, and has a top speed of 160 km per hour (99 mph).
Among car-makers, Honda and Toyota Motor Corp. were the world's first to put a fuel-cell vehicle on the road in December 2002, and have since been in a tight race to prepare them for mass-commercialisation.
Toyota said earlier this month that it has developed an advanced fuel-cell vehicle that can run for 830 km on a single tank of hydrogen.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp has said it would bring its i-MiEV rechargeable electric minicar to market in Japan next year, while plans are also underway to begin fleet testing at some U.S. power companies as early as this autumn.
