An Iranian lawmaker says the Majlis (parliament) Energy Committee has finalized a draft bill to stop the country's oil exports to EU member states in reaction to the bloc's recent decision to ban oil imports from Iran. - Nasser Soudani, deputy chairman of the committee, said on Saturday that the double-urgency bill for halting Iran oil exports to Europe had been finalized in four clauses. “According to one of the main clauses, the Islamic Republic of Iran will halt all oil exports to European countries as long as they continue to ban oil imports from Iran,” he added. The lawmaker said the bill may undergo further modifications as some Iranian parliamentarians believe that oil exports to EU should be stopped for five years.

PressTV: '70 EU refineries to shut for Iran oil ban'

Such public displays have been incredibly common in recent years, but US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey’s emergency visit to Israel last week may well have had a sense of genuine urgency not often seen. - That’s because increasingly, the long-standing Israeli threats to attack Iran are being taken as a distinct and imminent possibility. Sanctions and announcements related to impending embargoes by the international community seem aimed more at placating Israel and convincing them to hold off on the attack.

Pepe Escobar: Iran Not Isolated - Audio
Jim Lobe: Growing Elite Opposition to Military Option Against Iran

Ministry of Defence says 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment soldier was shot during a foot patrol in Helmand province. - Officials have not yet released the identity of the soldier but said his family has been notified. Britain has about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, most based in the southern province. The death brings to 397 the number of British personnel who have died in Afghanistan since "operations" [the occupation] began in 2001.

For Republican candidates seeking Jewish vote in the 2012 US presidential election, it is an open season to launch scathing attacks on the Palestinians and to show the Zionist side of their faces. - These candidates have been competing with one another in a cannibalistic way for months to take the most hard line position against the occupied people of Palestine. In a TV talk show on Thursday, one of these candidates Mitt Romney, the most likely to represent his party in the election, said US president Barack Obama sacrificed Israel by his policies, while his party's mate Newt Gingrich reiterated his racist slurs against the Palestinians and labeled them as an invented people. Romney claimed that the presence of Hamas (a resistance movement founded in 1987 during the first intifada) and its supporters among the Palestinian leaders was the reason behind the absence of peace between the Palestinian and Israelis. During a debate aired by US TV channels, Romney also said the [occupied] Palestinians teach their school children how to kill Jews, while the Hamas-Fatah speeches deny the Jewish people their right to statehood and call for destroying Israel. He added that the Israelis would be happy to have a two-state solution, but the Palestinians reject this solution and want to eliminate the state of Israel.

In a speech Thursday to the Davos World Economic Forum, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged that his Conservative government will pursue a “transformative” big business agenda—austerity and tax cuts, radical regressive changes to public health care and pensions, and deregulation. In short, a social policy counter-revolution. With a significant cross-section of the world’s financial elite in the audience, Harper touted Canada as a haven for investors, where businesses already enjoy the lowest taxes on new investment of any G-7 country. But, he vowed, “We will do more, much more.”

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump: A World Heritage Site

Located 18 km north & west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada at a location where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains meet the great plains, one of the world's oldest, largest, and best preserved buffalo jumps can be found. Head-Smashed-In - a Unesco World Heritage Site - has been used continuously by aboriginal peoples of the plains for more than 5,500 years.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is an archaeological site known around the world as a remarkable testimony of prehistoric life. The Jump bears witness to a custom practiced by native people of the North American plains for nearly 6,000 years. Due to their excellent understanding of topography and bison behavior, native people killed bison by chasing them over a precipice. They then carved up the carcasses in the camp set up below the cliffs.

In 1981, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the Jump as a World Heritage Site placing it among other world attractions such as the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and the Galapagos Islands. For more information on UNESCO, go to www.unesco.org