Tehran (AFP) - Russia has signed a preliminary agreement to build at least two more nuclear power plants in the Iranian port city of Bushehr, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

The deal was reached during a visit to Tehran on Tuesday by a senior official of Russia's state atomic energy agency Rosatom, IRNA said.

"Iran and Russia reached a preliminary agreement to build at least two new nuclear power plants," Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told the news agency.

The two new 1,000 megawatt plants will be constructed alongside the existing power station in Bushehr, which was also built by Russia, Kamalvandi said.

Further talks will be held on technical and financial aspects of the project, but a final agreement is expected to be signed "very soon", he added.

In January, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that establishing long-term relations between the two countries "can serve the stability and security of the region".

Iranian media last month speculated that Rouhani could travel to Russia for a regional conference of Caspian Sea states that Tehran's envoy to Moscow has said will be in late September.

Construction of the new Bushehr nuclear plants is likely to spark concerns among Gulf Arab states, which have often raised concerns about the reliability of the existing Bushehr facility and the risk of radioactive leaks in case of a major earthquake.

Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent quakes. On April 9, a 6.1-magnitude quake rocked the south, with an epicentre just 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Bushehr.

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The inside of reactor at the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran is pictured …

Both Iran and Russia have dismissed the claim, saying the Bushehr facility is subject to inspection by and the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog.

- 'Reducing reliance on oil' -

Western powers and Israel suspect the Islamic republic's nuclear programme masks a covert weapons drive. Tehran denies the charge, saying that by diversifying its energy resources it wants to reduce its reliance on oil revenues.

Iran, which still faces tight Western sanctions on its oil and banking sectors despite a landmark agreement reached with major powers in November on its nuclear programme, is expected to fund the new Bushehr project on a barter basis.

Tehran's ambassador to Russia, Mehdi Sanaei, said last month that the close trading partners have been negotiating the delivery by Iran of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day (bpd) in return for Russian goods and services, including the planned new nuclear plants.

Russian officials have neither confirmed nor denied the discussions, while stressing that they would not break UN sanctions.

But the White House has raised "serious concern" about the potential of the mooted deal to undermine EU and US sanctions which it credits with bringing Iran to the nuclear negotiating table.

One Russian report said the barter agreement could see as much as 500,000 bpd of Iranian crude exchanged for Russian goods, which Sanaei said could also include heavy trucks and railway equipment.

That would represent a boost of more than 50 percent to Iran's crude exports, undermining the crippling sanctions that Western governments credit with securing its signature to the long-sought interim nuclear deal agreed in November.

Iran and world powers are still negotiating a long-term agreement to allay Western concerns about its nuclear ambitions.

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Iran sits astride several major fault lines, adding to its neighbors' concerns about the use of nuclear power.
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A massive explosion followed by a fire at a pair of apartment buildings in upper Manhattan on Wednesday has left two people dead and at least 22 injured, officials say.

Two of the injured are hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, according to FDNY. Five others are in serious condition, but with non-life-threatening injuries, the fire department said. Fifteen others suffered minor injuries.

Rescuers are currently combing through bricks by hand in an effort to locate other possible victims. More than a dozen people are reportedly unaccounted for.

“There are a number of people missing,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference. “I emphasize that those who are missing could well be safe in another location and just not contacted yet or reachable yet.”

The FDNY said it received a call shortly after 9:30 a.m. reporting a large explosion in the five-story apartment building on Park Avenue near 116th Street in East Harlem.

The blast shattered windows and crumbled walls up to several blocks away from the explosion. Residents in the neighborhood told reporters they feared the earthshaking boom was a terrorist attack. One man was so worried, he told CNN, that he rushed out of his home wearing nothing but his underwear.

"This is a tragedy of the worst kind," de Blasio said. "There was no indication in time to save people."

Based on preliminary information, the mayor said, “The only indication of danger came about 15 minutes earlier when a gas leak was reported to Con Edison. Con Ed dispatched a team to respond. The explosion occurred before that team could arrive."

Bill de Blasio ✔ @BilldeBlasio

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.@FDNY response time to #EastHarlemExplosion was 2 minutes. Heroic work by 250+ firefighters on scene.

12:05 PM - 12 Mar 2014

Con Edison spokesman Bob McGee said that the company received a call from a resident of an adjacent building who reported smelling gas inside "but indicated the odor may have been coming from outside the building." Two Con Ed crews were dispatched at 9:15 a.m. but arrived just after the explosion.

Ruben Borrero, a resident of one of the flattened buildings, told the Associated Press that the smell of gas was “unbearable” and residents complained about it repeatedly, even as recently as Tuesday. Con Edison says it received no gas complaints from the building before Wednesday, the AP reported.

Police, including some wearing gas masks, "handed out medical masks to residents and onlookers because of the thick white smoke that shrouded the area."

The fire department responded with 44 units and more than 250 firefighters to the five-alarm incident. According to public records, the address that firefighters initially responded to — 1646 Park Ave. — was built in 1910.

Reached by phone, an employee of the man who owns the building told Yahoo News that she didn't know what might have sparked the blast. The five-story building is home to four floors of apartments and Absolute Piano on the street level. The employee said everyone at the piano shop was safe.

According to public records, the neighboring building — 1644 Park Ave. — is home to apartments and the street-level Spanish Christian Church.

Click image above for slideshow. (Adnan Islam/Reuters)

“I’ve never had anything this horrific that’s happened in my community since I’ve been in Washington,” Rep. Charles Rangel, who represents Harlem, told NBC's New York affiliate. “This is a very serious thing. It’s our community’s 9/11, even though we don’t know how it started."

Some witnesses described a chaotic scene.

“The whole building shook,” one nearby worker told the New York Post.

"I saw a lady running with no shoes on," another told Agence France-Press. "It was crazy. It was like a war zone. ... I thought it was an earthquake. I got calls from my family who felt it too and that was all the way uptown."

The explosion occurred near elevated train tracks, and Metro North train service into and out of New York's Grand Central Terminal was temporarily suspended. (Service was later restored.)

The blast was picked up by earthquake seismometers in the area, including one in nearby Central Park and another — Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory — some 16 miles north.

According to the White House, President Obama was briefed on the incident in New York by Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland Security and counterterrorism.

Photos posted to Twitter showed smoke and dust coming from the neighborhood north of Central Park, and firefighters searching the rubble for victims.

British Prime Minister David Cameron (L) shakes hands with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu after delivering joint statements in Jerusalem March 12, 2014. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

By William James

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron denounced Iran's government as a "despotic regime" in a speech to Israel's parliament on Wednesday and accused Tehran of making "despicable" efforts to arm Palestinian militants.

His address to the Knesset was staunchly pro-Israeli, and he delighted his hosts by claiming Jewish ancestral roots and talking tough on Iran, which is in negotiations with world powers on curbing its contested nuclear ambitions.

"I share your deep skepticism and great concern about Iran," Cameron said. "I am not starry eyed about the new regime," he added, referring to the election last year of President Hassan Rouhani, seen as a relative moderate in Iran.

The Conservative British leader, on his first visit to Israel since taking power in 2010, also used his speech to throw his support behind U.S. efforts to clinch an elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

However, he said global tensions around Iran over what Israel and the West fear is its pursuit of nuclear weapons, were likely to persist even if the generations-old Middle East conflict was resolved. Iran denies seeking atomic arms.

"Israel is not the cause of the shadow that Iran casts over the world," Cameron said.

"There is no rule that says if Israel and the Palestinians make peace, Iran is somehow going to dismantle its despotic regime or abandon its nuclear intentions."

Cameron said he had not come to lecture Israel on how to secure peace, and he made only a passing reference to continued Jewish settlement in occupied land that Palestinians say is stifling their aspirations for an independent state.

"We all yearn for a lasting and secure peace between Israel and its neighbors," Cameron said. ‬"We back the compromises needed, including the halt to settlement activity and an end to Palestinian incitement too.‬"

CAPTURED ROCKETS

Britain has strengthened its diplomatic ties with Tehran, appointing a non-resident charge d'affaires in November, but Cameron had harsh words for Iran over Israel's seizure in the Red Sea last week of a ship with rockets hidden in its cargo.

Israel said the Syrian-made missiles had been supplied by Iran and were intended for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Iran has denied the accusations.

Cameron said it was "yet another despicable attempt by the Iranians to smuggle more long-range rockets into Gaza".

Soon after the speech - in which Cameron decried "the poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism" - Israeli Army Radio reported that a barrage of missiles were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, an enclave ruled by Hamas Islamists.

He also pointed to any future nuclear-armed Iran as "a threat to the whole world" and pledged that Britain would never allow that to happen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denounced an interim nuclear deal signed last November by leading powers, including Britain, that allowed an easing of some sanctions against Iran.

He has also repeatedly condemned the possibility that a future accord, already under discussion, might allow Iran to retain some technologies that have bomb-making potential.

Cameron is due to spend just two days in the region and hold separate talks with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who are at odds over U.S. proposals to keep peace talks going beyond an April target date for an agreement.

A succession of European leaders have visited Israel in recent months, and just like those before him, Cameron said he would seek to encourage Netanyahu and Abbas to back a framework deal being formulated by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

(Editing by Crispian Balmer)

You’re probably already well aware that the National Security Agency is spying on you. A new report from The Intercept reveals yet another place they’re doing it.

The NSA pretended to be Facebook—you know, that 500-million person social network—so it could trick you into downloading invasive malware. Per the piece:

"In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive," Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald report. "In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam."

It’s a variation on a common scheme called phishing, in which an entity poses as an official site, gains your trust and then exploits it. (See this recent Netflix scheme for an example.) Usually, the perpetrators are small-time crooks, and not the U.S. government.

These particular tactics were apparently once only reserved for a small number of difficult targets who couldn’t be monitored via traditional wiretaps. But according to documents obtained by The Intercept, the NSA has recently expanded this technology so that these little malware mines around the internet, dubbed implants, can “scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”

In other words, the NSA designed a surveillance system that skirted actual human oversight so that they could spread malware to millions of computers. Malware that allows them to see everything you’ve saved on your computer. Not cool.

Even worse? This type of spying actually weakens computer security systems, immediately making any NSA target vulnerable to third-party attacks, a malware expert told The Intercept.

The NSA declined to answer specific questions about this project. “As the president made clear on 17 January,” the agency said in a statement, “signals intelligence shall be collected exclusively where there is a foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose to support national and departmental missions, and not for any other purposes.”

These revelations come just on the heels of the South by Southwest Interactive conference, which hosted a talk with Edward Snowden on Monday. The former NSA contractor and whistleblower urged technologists to begin designing products which focus on individual security.

Technologists, hurry up, please.

Read the rest of the unsettling report here.