The announcement from Iranian Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh compounded skepticism about denting Tehran's nuclear defiance, just five days after Tehran stonewalled demands from six world powers that it halt activities capable of producing the fissile core of warheads. Besides demanding a suspension of uranium enrichment - a process that can create both fuel for nuclear reactors and payloads for atomic bombs - the six powers have been pressing Tehran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency's probe.

Iran, which is obligated as a signer of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty not to develop nuclear arms, raised suspicions about its intentions when it admitted in 2002 that it had run a secret nuclear program for nearly two decades in violation of its commitment.

The Tehran regime insists it halted such work and is now only trying to produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity. It agreed on a "work plan" with the Vienna-based IAEA a year ago for U.N. inspectors to look into allegations Iran is still doing weapons work. Tehran dismisses the suspicions of the U.S. and allies, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday again vowed that his country would not "retreat one iota" from pursuing uranium enrichment.

The new figure is double the 3,000 uranium-enriching machines Iran had previously said it was operating. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement, reported by the semi-official Fars news agency, comes a week after the U.S. reversed course in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program by sending a top American diplomat to participate in talks between Tehran and world powers.

The bend in policy had prompted hopes for a compromise under which Iran would agree to temporarily stop expansion of enrichment activities. But the White House said Saturday's development did not facilitate a resolution. "Announcements like this, whatever the true number is, are not productive and will only serve to further isolate Iran from the international community," said White House spokesman Carlton Carroll.

In the enrichment process, uranium gas is pumped into a series of centrifuges called "cascades." The gas is spun at supersonic speeds to remove impurities. Enriching at a low level produces nuclear fuel, but at a higher level it can produce the material for a warhead. The workhorse of Iran's enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge, which can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.

Experts say that if Tehran acquires and operates the S-300 missile batteries it would make any strike by Israel or the United States on Iran's nuclear facilities more difficult. Israeli defense sources said on Wednesday that Iran was set to receive the system, also known in the West as the SA-20, by the end of the year.

First delivery of the S-300 batteries was expected as soon as early September, one Israeli source said, though it could take six to 12 months for them to be deployed and operable. But Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said: "We firmly believe, based upon our understanding of the situation, that the Iranians will not be receiving that Russian anti-aircraft system this year."

Morrell, who was responding to a query from Reuters, declined to elaborate on the reasons for the Pentagon's view. His comments expanded on remarks by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said on July 9 that it was "highly unlikely that those air defense missiles would be in Iranian hands any time soon."

Olmert has been dogged by corruption scandals and his decision to bow out of his centrist Kadima party's leadership contest and then to step down throws Israeli politics into fresh turmoil and could lead to an early national election.

Observers say Olmert, who once described himself as "indestructible", could remain for months as caretaker prime minister should the new Kadima leader fail to form a new government or if parliament dissolved itself and called a vote. That could buy Olmert more time to pursue U.S.-backed peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and indirect negotiations with Syria. Neither track appears close to a breakthrough.

Consumer advocates taking part in a food safety conference in Orlando, Florida, this week said FOOD PRODUCED BY USING NANOTECHNOLOGY IS QUIETLY COMING ONTO THE MARKET, and they want U.S. authorities to force manufacturers to identify them.

Nanotechnology involves the design and manipulation of materials on molecular scales, smaller than the width of a human hair and invisible to the naked eye. Companies using nanotechnology say it can enhance the flavor or nutritional effectiveness of food.

U.S. health officials generally prefer not to place warning labels on products unless there are clear reasons for caution or concern. But consumer advocates say uncertainty over health consequences alone is sufficient cause to justify identifying nano-foods. "I THINK NANOTECHNOLOGY IS THE NEW GENETIC ENGINEERING. People just don't know what's going on, and it's moving so fast," Jane Kolodinsky, a consumer economist at the University of Vermont, said at the conference.

Oil has fallen more than $23 a barrel, or 16 percent, since peaking on July 3. Gasoline has slipped below $4 a gallon and is dropping fast as Americans drive less. Natural gas prices, which had risen the fastest this year as traders anticipated a hot summer, have fallen 33 percent since the beginning of the month.

Crude oil prices extended their decline on Tuesday, falling 2.5 percent, to $122.19 a barrel, their lowest level since the beginning of May. This helped spur a broad rally in the stock market, with all major indexes rising more than 2 percent. But stock markets still remain close to the lows of earlier this month, when they officially entered bear-market territory.

The declines in energy costs come after an equally sharp correction in the prices of many agricultural commodities like corn, wheat and rice, which took place a few weeks ago. These moves suggest to economists that GLOBAL MARKETS, IN A NEAR-PANIC EARLY THIS YEAR TO FIND PRICES HIGH ENOUGH TO ALLOCATE SCARCE SUPPLIES, OVERSHOT THE MARK AND BID PRICES TOO HIGH.

The Irish Daily Mail picks up on comments made by Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin yesterday, who dismissed the poll as outside "interference", and said Open Europe was "using Ireland as a battleground, as the pawn if you like, to manipulate the situation and to achieve their wider agenda of undermining the European Union itself."

Open Europe is quoted saying, "How is it interfering to ask people how they might vote in a future re-run referendum? It's not as though it hasn't happened before, look at Nice. It's clear that people don't want a referendum. The truth is the government is panicking, since its strategy of taking the country back to the polls is in trouble".

UK Shadow Foreign Minister William Hague had an article in the Irish Times over the weekend, arguing that "If Lisbon remains unratified by all EU member states, a Conservative government will put Britain's ratification of the treaty on ice and hold a referendum, RECOMMENDING A NO VOTE TO A DOCUMENT WE BELIEVE REPRESENTS AN OUTDATED CENTRALISING APPROACH TO THE EU. So the chances are growing that Ireland's voters will not be alone in saying No to Lisbon for long."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments may irritate major powers which have offered the Islamic Republic economic and other incentives to persuade it to suspend enrichment activity that can have both civilian and military uses. Iran, the world's fourth-largest crude producer, says its nuclear activities are aimed solely at generating electricity. It says it is ready for negotiations but will not accept any pre-conditions or threats in a row that has helped send oil prices sharply higher, despite falls in the last two weeks.

"Iran does not negotiate with anyone over its obvious nuclear right," Ahmadinejad said in the city of Mashhad. Iran says it aims eventually to have 50,000 centrifuges to produce fuel for a planned network of power plants. Enriched uranium can also provide material for arms if refined further.

If running smoothly for long periods, 3,000 would be enough to make material for a warhead in a year, Western experts say. The United States has warned Iran that it will face more sanctions if it fails to meet the two-week deadline. It has not ruled out military action if diplomacy were to fail.

Most of those said such extreme action was acceptable to defend Islam from attack but a small number (4%) said it was ok to kill to promote it. However a clear majority overall (55%) rejected the idea, in a survey carried out by internet pollsters YouGov for a study of campus extremism.

It gathered the opinions of 600 Muslim and 800 non-Muslim students at 12 high-profile universities with active Islamic Societies (Isoc). The Centre for Social Cohesion, which commissioned the study, said it had revealed "broad and varied" opinions among Muslim students. But co-author Hannah Stuart said the findings on extremist views - twice as high among Isoc members - were "deeply alarming".

"Students in higher education are the future leaders of their communities yet significant numbers of them appear to hold beliefs which contravene liberal, democratic values," she said. The poll found that most Muslim students (54%) would like to see the formation of an Islamic party to represent their views at Westminster.

As many as 128 fraud cases went to courts in the first half of the year, involving 630 million pounds - with banks suffering an all-time high of over 350 million pounds - said a report by accountancy firm KPMG, published on Tuesday. Fraud against banks totalled more in six months than in any whole year in the 20 year history of KPMG's Fraud Barometer, the accountancy firm said.

"Fraud remains extremely prevalent in the UK with professional gangs accounting for over two-thirds by value, ranging from investment stings to trading scams, card fraud and money laundering," said Hitesh Patel, partner at KPMG Forensic unit.

"The ingenuity and audacity of fraudsters often simply catches people off their guard," Patel said in the report. "That is why companies and individuals need to be fully alert to what is, in these challenging economic conditions, an ever-present and growing threat."

"Let them lay down their weapons, if only temporarily, so that humanity can lay claim to gold even before the Games begin," he said in a message almost two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing. Such a truce, although limited in duration, could provide pause in which to reflect on the heavy cost of war, as well as an opening for a dialogue and a window through which to provide relief for suffering populations, he said.

"It can demonstrate to the world that PEACE IS POSSIBLE in even the most seemingly intractable situations if we truly work towards it," Ban added. The International Olympic Committee renewed in 1992 the ancient Greek tradition by calling on all nations to observe an 'Olympic Truce' during the period the Olympic Games are held.

Even when they found new jobs, workers displaced by job loss to China saw their earnings decrease by an average of $8,146 each year because the new jobs paid less, according to the report, funded in part by labor unions.

US manufacturers, labor unions and many lawmakers have long accused China of manipulating its currency to give Chinese companies an unfair advantage in international trade, and are pressing China to continue to allow the yuan to rise against the US dollar to help level the playing field.

China has said the United States should recognize how much its yuan currency has already risen against the US dollar - it is about 20 percent higher since China revalued its currency in July 2005. China has also said the fact that Americans save much less of their incomes than do the Chinese has fueled the trade deficit. Chinese-made goods have been snapped up in recent years by US consumers looking for low prices.

A total of seven U.S. companies with more than a billion dollars in assets have filed for bankruptcy protection so far this year, it said. Fremont General Corp, which was one of the largest U.S. providers of subprime mortgages before regulators ordered it to stop making the loans, was the largest filing of the year with $13 billion in pre-petition assets, BankruptcyData.com said. Fremont filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, after arranging to sell bank branches and deposits to CapitalSource Inc.

SemGroup LP, the energy trader which filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors last week, was the second-largest bankruptcy filing of the year with $6 billion in pre-petition assets.

"We seem to be in the midst of a 'PERFECT STORM' leading to more bankruptcies: HIGH LEVELS OF DEBT, HIGH ENERGY AND RAW MATERIALS COSTS AND WEAKNESS IN THE U.S. ECONOMY," George Putnam, III of New Generation Research, which publishes BankruptcyData.com said in a statement.

"The nanotechnology initiative was announced in Russia in 2007 and it envisions financing in two directions: research in the sphere of nanotechnology, coordinated by the Kurchatov institute; and commercialization of nanotechnology projects, which the Rosnanotech corporation is responsible for," Leonid Melamed said.

He added that another $1 billion was to be spent outfitting scientific labs with modern equipment, and that the corporation's total budget was about $5.5 billion.

Clayton Teague, who heads the U.S. National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, earlier said at a meeting with the management of Rosnanotech in Washington that each year the United States allocated an average of $1.5 billion in federal funds to nanotech projects.

The Wall Street investment bank and brokerage announced its plans less than two weeks after posting a $4.9 billion second-quarter loss, hurt by more than $9 billion of write-downs.

Merrill said its stock sale includes $3.4 billion to Singapore's state-run Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd TEM.UL, one of its largest investors, and may grow to $9.8 billion to meet demand. Management also plans to buy 750,000 shares, it said.

Monday's write-down and plans to raise capital may raise further questions about Chief Executive John Thain's ability to turn around Merrill. The company has lost $19.2 billion in the last year and suffered MORE THAN $40 BILLION of write-downs from subprime mortgages and other risky debt.