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The United States and Russia signed a landmark strategic nuclear disarmament treaty on Thursday and said new sanctions may be necessary to put pressure on Iran to renounce its nuclear ambitions.

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed the pact at a ceremony in the mediaeval Prague Castle after talks that covered nuclear security, Iran's atomic programme and an uprising in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, where both major powers have military bases.

The treaty will cut strategic nuclear arsenals deployed by the former Cold War foes by 30 per cent within seven years. However, it leaves each country with enough to destroy the other.

When ratified by lawmakers in both countries, the treaty will replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which expired last year. Mr Obama said the agreement had \"ended the drift\" in relations between Moscow and Washington and sent a strong signal that the two powers - which together possess 90 per cent of all atomic weapons - were taking their disarmament obligations seriously.

\"We are working together at the United Nations Security Council to pass strong sanctions on Iran and we will not tolerate actions that flout the NPT,\" he said, referring to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

\"My expectation is that we are going to be able to secure strong, tough sanctions on Iran this spring,\" he added. Mr Medvedev said he regretted that Tehran had not reacted to constructive proposals on its nuclear programme and the Security Council might have to take further sanctions, but they should be \"smart\" and not bring disaster on the Iranian people.

\"Today we had a very open, frank and straightfoward discussion of what can be done and cannot be done,\" the Russian president said, adding that he had given Mr Obama a list of Moscow's limits.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declined to detail the list but told reporters a total embargo on deliveries of refined oil products to Iran, for example, would be unacceptable since it would cause a \"huge shock for the whole society and the whole population\".

The situation in Kyrgyzstan, where opposition protesters forced out President Kurmanbek Bakiyev on Wednesday, thrust its way on to the agenda as both Washington and Moscow have military bases in the poor central Asian state. The US base at Manas is vital for supplying Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin effectively recognised the interim Kyrgyz government formed by opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva on Thursday, speaking to her by telephone, his spokesman said. The State Department declined immediate comment on whether Washington would follow suit.

Mr Obama this week announced a shift in US nuclear doctrine, pledging never to use atomic weapons against non-nuclear states, as he sought to build momentum for an April 12-13 nuclear security summit in Washington. The US president reaffirmed the long-term goal he set in a speech at the same Prague Castle a year ago to work towards a world without nuclear weapons and said Mr Medvedev would visit the United States later this year to discuss further cooperation, including withdrawing short-range tactical nuclear weapons.

Obama, Medvedev sign treaty to reduce nuclear weapons

By Michael D. Shear Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 8, 2010; 9:31 AM

PRAGUE -- President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a sweeping new arms reduction pact Thursday that pledges to reduce the stockpile of deployed, strategic nuclear weapons in both countries and commits the old Cold War adversaries to new procedures to verify which weapons each country possesses.

Obama arrived in this historic city Thursday morning to formalize a step toward the vision he laid out here a year ago -- of a world without nuclear weapons.

The leaders met privately for about an hour before signing the pact in a ceremony hosted by the Czechs and full of symbolism. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was among the many dignitaries looking on as Obama and Medvedev began signing, at one point exchanging amused glances as if to say, \"This isn't so hard.\"

\"Together, we have stopped the drift, and proven the benefits of cooperation,\" Obama said in remarks a short time later. \". . . This day demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia -- the two nations that hold

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over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons -- to pursue responsible global leadership.\"

U.S. officials said the full treaty document, just now finished after months of negotiation, would be posted on the Internet later Thursday. The White House also announced that Medvedev would visit the United States for a summit this summer.

The treaty, called New START, imposes new limits on ready-to-use, long-range nuclear weapons and pledges to reduce the two biggest nuclear arsenals on the globe. Both countries will be limited to 1,550 ready-to-use, long-range nuclear weapons in addition to the other parts of their nuclear stockpile.

Arms control advocates have expressed disappointment in the treaty, saying it does not go far enough in reducing the dangerous weapons on both sides. Some conservatives have raised questions about the treaty's impact on the American nuclear deterrent.

But experts from the right and the left agree the treaty extends a verification plan that has allowed the world's two nuclear giants to maintain stability that has existed for the past 20 years.

In the United States, attention will soon turn to the Senate, where the White House is pushing for ratification of the pact by the end of 2010.

In a briefing on Air Force One en route to Prague, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs expressed optimism that the Senate will act despite the partisan rancor of the past year.

\"We are hopeful that reducing the threat of nuclear weapons remains a priority for both parties,\" Gibbs said. White House officials said they will begin formally briefing senators Thursday.

Senior U.S. officials said Obama's trip to Prague is designed to set the stage for further efforts by the president to argue for reductions in the spread of nuclear weapons around the globe.

The treaty's new limits on Russian and American nuclear weapons are important in their own right, officials said, but are also crucial in restoring a \"moral legitimacy\" to both countries as they seek to restrain other nations from becoming nuclear powers.

\"The signing of the new treaty is part of an overall strategy to put us in a strong political position to mobilize support,\" said one top White House adviser. \"By restoring our moral legitimacy it puts us in a much stronger position.\"

White House aides said the treaty demonstrates that both countries have taken a \"serious step\" toward nuclear disarmament, and predicted in advance that the conversation would quickly shift to efforts by the world community to deal with Iranian and Korean nuclear ambitions.

\"All of that will come to a head in May,\" when the U.S. hosts a conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, said one senior official. \"Everybody understands that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. The question is whether the countries in the NPT and the United Nations will be acting together to stop Iran.\"

On the flight to Prague, Gibbs told reporters that the questions of sanctions on Iran would be a key part of the discussions, but said that both presidents would defer to the multilateral negotiations on that issue underway in New York.

\"I don't expect any pronouncements today coming out of this meeting,\" Gibbs said before it started.

As they prepared for Thursday's signing ceremonies at the Prague Castle, Obama aides made clear that they viewed the president's meetings with Medvedev as a broader opportunity to discuss the improving relationship between the two countries.

Both countries sent full delegations to the Czech Republic, a sign that U.S. officials said reflects the desire for a wide-ranging discussion between the two leaders. One top Obama aide said the two presidents intended to discuss economic issues that have been largely overshadowed by months of nuclear talks.

\"This is a full-blown summit,\" said one White House official, who predicted that Obama would raise issues including climate change, European security, missile defense issues and the conflict in Afghanistan.

\"We're going to have a very substantive meeting with President Medvedev,\" the official said. \"This is not just a relationship about arms control.\"

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Obama advisers said the meeting will begin to lay the groundwork for a visit to the United States by Medvedev this summer -- a reciprocal visit for Obama's trip to Moscow last July.

U.S. aides are eager to portray the American-Russian relationship as vastly improved, an achievement they attribute to Obama's decision to \"reset\" relations when the two leaders first met in London last April.

\"Let's remember where U.S.-Russian relations were when we took office,\" one top adviser said. \"We were at one of the lowest points in a quarter-century. We're only now 15 months from that and we're in a different kind of relationship.\"

Kyrgyzstan opposition seizes power after day of protests guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 April 2010

Opposition leaders in Kyrgyzstan today declared that they had seized power and had taken control of security headquarters, state television and various government buildings.

The declaration came a day after riot police shot dead at least 60 people and protesters attempted to storm the main government building in the capital, Bishkek.The opposition leader, Roza Otunbayeva, called for President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to resign and said she planned to run an interim government for six months to draft a new constitution for the central Asian state.

Speaking in Bishkek's ransacked parliament building this morning, Otunbayeva said Bakiyev was currently in the south of the country and had apparently taken refuge in the town of Jalal-Abad. Asked whether the new government had plans to arrest him, she said: \"He should resign. His business is finished in Kyrgyzstan.\" She went on: \"You can call what happened here a popular uprising or a revolution. In essence people were simply fed up with the previous regime, and with its repressive, tyrannical and abusive behaviour. They want to build democracy here.\"

Otunbayeva, a former foreign minister, said the country's security service and interior ministry were under the full control of the new coalition government, made up of several opposition leaders. No decisions had been made over the future of the US airbase at Manas, near Bishkek, she said, which the opposition had said it wanted to close. According to Otunbayeva, 60 people were killed yesterday and 300 injured when protesters tried to storm the main government building in the centre of Bishkek.

Today the building was on fire, with thick black smoke pouring out of its upper floors. Hundreds of looters gathered in the grassy forecourt surrounding the White House building. The burnt-out shells of several trucks and a tractor lay next to smashed-in railings.

Despite the new regime's claims that it was in control of events, there was no sign today of police or security forces, who appeared to be in hiding. Instead, large crowds milled around the capital's Soviet-era boulevards. Dozens of shops had been looted. Several burned out cars littered the pavements.

This afternoon looters were busy stripping a yellow-painted mansion belonging to Bakiyev's son Maxim, one of several family members who occupied prominent positions in the deposed government. Several were digging up shrubs and small fir trees. One man was wrestling with a piece of drain-piping.

Close to the main government building, the prosecutor general's office in Bishkek had been completely gutted. Drunken youths roamed around inside, smashing windows with table-legs and steel bars. At the parliament building demonstrators threw portraits of Bakiyev out onto the street.

Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, today promised the new interim government assistance and moral support. The Kremlin had been frustrated with the previous Bakiyev regime, which it believed had fallen under US influence. US plans to build a new anti-terrorism centre in the south of the country had also concerned Moscow. US officials will hold a meeting shortly with the new government to discuss the Manas base, a key staging point for the US military's operations in Afghanistan.

The US national security council spokesman, Mike Hammer, said yesterday: \"We are monitoring the situation closely. We are concerned about reports of violence and looting and call on all parties to refrain from violence and exercise restraint.\" Today protesters said they had been driven on to the streets by recent steep price hikes to communal services such as water and electricity. The hikes had been the last straw in a country already wrestling

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with huge unemployment and widespread poverty. They said police and snipers had opened fire on innocent civilians, killing them in cold blood.

The uprising began in several provincial cities on Tuesday and then spread yesterday morning to Bishkek when around 200 people gathered outside the offices of the main social democratic opposition parties.

The demonstrators dodged attempts by police to stop them and marched towards the centre of the city, setting fire to police cars and blockading the road.

Bakiyev – who came to power in 2005 on the back of the pro-democratic Tulip revolution – arrested several opposition figures on Tuesday. But the move was insufficient to stop the wave of anti-government protests. The previous prime minister, Daniyar Usenov, resigned yesterday, with a new opposition-led cabinet formed in the early hours of this morning.

April 8, 2010 Will We Forget the Miners Again? By E.J. Dionne

WASHINGTON -- There is a dispiriting and, yes, heartbreaking sameness about how we respond to mining disasters. The catastrophe at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., has taken at least 25 lives. An entire community stands in solidarity with the families of the victims, and hopes that some miners still trapped may yet be rescued.

We celebrate the stoic sturdiness of mine workers who pursue their craft with pride, bravery, and full knowledge of the risks it entails. Then we get to the questions about what might have been done to avert the disaster. What was the role of the company that ran the mine? What are the responsibilities of lawmakers and government regulators whose job it is to devise and enforce rules to protect those who, as an old union song put it, dig the coal so the world can run?

We went through exactly this cycle after the Sago Mine catastrophe that took 12 lives in January of 2006. Later in the year, Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act. The MINER Act, as it is known, is \"the most significant mine safety legislation in 30 years,\" according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration's Web site.

The law strengthened the agency's staff, increased penalties for violations and, as The Washington Post reported, \"led to a higher number of citations and penalties -- and more challenges by companies.\" That last phrase is important. Companies just don't like regulation, and Don L. Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy Co., has a history of challenging the regulators in every way he can.

Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine has been cited for safety violations 1,342 times since 2005. Eighty-six of those citations involved failing to follow a mine ventilation plan to control methane and coal dust, 12 of them coming last month alone.

Not surprisingly, Blankenship views this as the cost of doing business. \"Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process,\" he said in a radio interview with West Virginia Metro News. \"There are violations at every coal mine in America and UBB (Upper Big Branch) was a mine that had violations.\"

Congress will no doubt have hearings on this and we will learn just how \"normal\" Massey's operation of Upper Big Branch was. According to The New York Times, the company appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations it received for serious safety violations in the last year.

Blankenship is also a poster child for why we need campaign finance laws, and why recent moves by the U.S. Supreme Court to weaken them are so dangerous. Blankenship spent $3 million to help elect a justice to the West Virginia Supreme Court who then twice provided the key vote that set aside a $50 million jury verdict against Massey.

Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that judges must disqualify themselves in cases involving litigants from whom they received large campaign contributions. But the margin on that case was only 5-4. Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the dissenters, argued that the majority's decision \"will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be.\" No, don't question those judges, even when their campaigns get 3 million bucks.

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That particular case concerned fraud, not mine regulation. But there's a pattern here to which we should pay heed, and it involves power. Too often, regulations are discussed in the abstract as a \"burden\" on companies that expend substantial sums to resist them.

Only after disasters such as this one do we remember that regulations exist for a reason, that their enforcement can, literally, be a matter of life and death. We will eventually learn what went wrong at Upper Big Branch and whether the safety violations were part of the problem. But then what will we do?

In the 30th anniversary edition of his classic book \"Everything in Its Path,\" the sociologist Kai Erikson reflects on the meaning of an earlier West Virginia mining country disaster that he wrote about so powerfully, the 1972 flood in Logan County's Buffalo Creek.

Pondering his research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Erikson concludes that we live in \"a world in which the most vulnerable of people end up taking the brunt of disasters resulting both from natural processes and from human activities.\" Perhaps the world will always be this way. But can't we bend it toward justice, at least a little bit?

Fruit and vegetables have little effect on cancer risk, study finds guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7April

Eating a lot of fruit and vegetables has only \"a very modest\" effect on protecting against cancer, according to a study. Researchers suggest that the \"five portions a day\" health mantra has strong validity only when it comes to preventing the disease in heavy drinkers. Even then the benefits may apply only to cancers caused by alcohol and smoking, such as those in the gut, throat and mouth.

The verdict is based on a study of almost 500,000 people in 10 European countries and suggests that even the small overall association of fruit and vegetable consumption with prevention of cancer may be linked to other factors.

Fruit and vegetable intake was compared with cancer data covering nine years up to 2000 for the research published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers adjusted the results for other factors likely to influence the results, such as smoking, alcohol intake, obesity, consumption of meat and processed meat, exercise and whether women had taken the contraceptive pill or hormone replacement therapy.

The results showed that eating an extra 200g of fruit and vegetables a day reduced the overall risk of cancer by 3%. The link between eating a large amount of vegetables and reduced cancer risk applied only to women. The study, led by Paolo Boffetta from the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, suggested a \"weak\" association between high fruit and vegetable intake and reduced cancer risk.

An accompanying editorial by Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health said efforts to increase fruit and vegetable consumption were still worthwhile because accumulating evidence showed that they helped protect against cardiovascular disease and \"a small benefit for cancer remains possible\". Research now should focus more sharply on specific fruits and vegetables – including lycopene in tomatoes which, studies suggest, helps protect against prostate cancer – and on reducing smoking and obesity.

NHS advice in Britain is careful to say that eating five portions a day can help reduce the risk of \"some cancers\including bowel cancer, and heart disease, type 2 diabetes, strokes and obesity.

U.S. looks beyond currency talks with China By Howard Schneider Thursday, April 8, 2010; A14

The Obama administration is hoping that talks on Thursday between Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and a top Chinese official will advance a broader conversation about China's place in the emerging world economic order, a discussion that might focus in the short term on technical issues such as exchange rates but is rooted in deeper concerns.

Geithner is expected to be in Beijing only a matter of hours to meet Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, detouring on his way home from India for talks with a man who has been a key negotiator with the United States over global economic issues. Discussion of China's currency policy is expected to dominate a meeting that comes amid widespread concern that the renminbi is purposefully undervalued in order to make Chinese exports cheaper

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on world markets, and among initial signs that China might be preparing to relax its strictly controlled exchange rate. But the currency issue is only a proxy for a complex set of issues, including Asian regional trade, China's mounting stocks of foreign reserves, the country's still comparatively closed markets and its importance in ensuring global growth, that administration officials and other analysts say they hope will be addressed in coming months.

\"We are now at a point where the worst of the economic crisis may be behind us,\" a senior administration official said in advance of Geithner's meeting with Wang. \"Now is the time to begin to more deeply engage,\" over long-term changes in the relationship between the countries.

The dispute over currency rates is an old one and the script familiar to those involved. The U.S. trade deficit with China began ballooning after the country joined the World Trade Organization a decade ago. In 2005, lawmakers on Capitol Hill began a push against China's fixed currency rates and threatened to impose a stiff tariff against the country's imports. The political pressure in Washington helped then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in negotiations that led to a roughly 20 percent rise in the value of the renminbi over the next two years.

One of the leaders of that effort, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), is mounting a similar effort now and said he will continue pushing for legislation to tighten U.S. law regarding China's currency policy, even as Geithner and other administration officials push for a brokered solution.

\"This is a very severe problem, not a minor problem,\" Schumer said. \"The Chinese are acting like they are the 20th-largest economy in the world, not the second.\"

That earlier currency dispute is illustrative: The rise in the value of the renminbi did not prevent the U.S. trade deficit with the country from continuing upward, as the U.S. appetite for cheap imports, rising Chinese productivity and other factors partly offset the effects of a stronger renminbi.

But this time, Washington-based analysts and administration officials say, the discussion is taking on a different tone: one that recognizes the urgency in getting China's relationship with the rest of the world on a more balanced footing.

As a bilateral issue, the battle over the renminbi is about jobs at a time of high unemployment in the United States, perhaps several hundred thousand that could be generated if the Chinese currency traded at a level closer to what it would fetch on the open market, said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. An even more profound realignment would occur throughout Southeast Asia, however, if China let its currency float more freely. As it stands, he said, countries such as Singapore and Malaysia have become economic satellites of Beijing, tying their currencies closely to the renminbi so that their manufacturers are not operating at a disadvantage.

If all of those currencies floated more freely, the benefit to the United States would be even greater, perhaps shaving as much as $150 billion off of the country's annual trade deficit, he said. \"Whatever impact you calculate for a Chinese currency change, you can roughly double it because of that gravitational effect,\" Bergsten said. The issue is critical as well for other lower-wage manufacturing countries, nations such as Vietnam that might become more competitive if China's goods become relatively more expensive, or those such as India that have let their currency float more freely and paid a price.

There is discussion as well about China's steady accumulation of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign reserves, estimated by Cornell University economist Eswar S. Prasad at perhaps $2.4 trillion, with nearly $5 billion held in U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar investments. Economists in the United States, at international organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund -- and within China itself -- are debating how that pool of capital might be put to better use in the world economy, but in a way that would not undermine the value of the U.S. currency. Over the long term, the change in China's exchange rates would curb its accumulation of reserves, another aim of the global economic \"rebalancing\" President Obama and other officials are advocating. \"Setting the relationship on an even keel is important, not just for the principals but for the broader world economy,\" Prasad wrote in a recent analysis of China's reserve holdings.

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