TurkmenPost

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan said it will press ahead with its multi-billion-dollar oil investment in Iran, rejecting a report that US officials have pressured Tokyo to pull out due to Tehran’s nuclear drive.

The Sankei Shimbun said the United States had asked its close ally, which is heavily reliant on Middle Eastern oil, at least to halt work in Azadegan in southwestern Iran, one of the world’s biggest untapped reserves.

The demands were made informally by US officials including Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and undersecretary of state for arms control Robert Joseph, the conservative daily said, quoting anonymous sources in Washington.

But Vice Trade Minister Hideji Sugiyama denied the report and said Japan would go ahead with the Azadegan project.

"I understand that there is no truth that there was a request. For now we will stick to our current policy," Sugiyama told reporters.

He said Japan would balance the mounting concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions with the needs of the world’s second largest economy.

"We hope that Iran will listen to the international community’s concerns, but at the same time it is important to have a stable supply of crude oil from Iran," he said.

The US embassy here said Japan was aware of US opposition to investment in Iran but declined to comment on whether Washington has pressured Tokyo to stop the Azadegan project.

Read the rest here.

via yahoo news. 

Like teenagers, babies don’t much care what their parents say.

Though they are learning words at 10 months old, infants tend to grasp the names of objects that interest them rather than whatever the speaker thinks is important, a new study has found.

And they do it quickly.

 The infants were able to learn two new words in five minutes with just five presentations for each word and object, said study leader Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University. Importantly, the babies paired a new word to the object they liked best, regardless of what object the speaker referred to.

"The baby naturally assumes that the word you’re speaking goes with the object that they think is interesting, not the object that you show an interest in," Hirsh-Pasek said.

The result is not too surprising, Hirsh-Pasek said in a telephone interview. She says interest drives learning for older children, too, and even adults.

 Link goes to rest of the article.

Apparently Pink has been taking classes to learn how to pole dance for her husband. She’s even flown dancers in to learn from them. You go girl.

Pink has reportedly asked that a 12ft pole is installed in her dressing room - because she wants to give hubby Carey Hart a sexy pre-show treat.

The star - who has allegedly been taking lessons for her erotic show - has also flown in four lapdancers from top Los Angeles club, The Body Shop.

An insider told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper: "Pink wants a party all of her own before the show for her fans begins…Pink plans to have a lot of fun with the lapdancers both on stage and off…By the end of the night Carey will think all his Christmases have come at once."

via egotastic 

Microsoft has delayed the release of its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system until January 2007.

The application will be made available to enterprises in November this year.

Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin in a conference call said that the company decided to push back the release date of the consumer version of the operating system because computer manufacturers required more time to test and prepare their systems.

Microsoft was confronted by quality issues that caused the release to be pushed back "a few weeks". This prompted manufacturers to ask the software vendor to delay the consumer to 2007 because they had insufficient time to test and prepare their systems for availability this calendar year.

"Quality is the top line message. We needed just a few more weeks," Allchin said. "We’ll release to manufacturing and we’ll sit on the disk for the consumer launch."

Windows Vista was originally promised for the second half of 2006.

Delays have plagued the operating system throughout its development. The software was originally planned as an upgrade to Windows XP and was expected to come out in 2003. Development however was delayed after Microsoft decided to add features and pulled developers off the project to work on the security oriented Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP.

The decision to delay the release of the consumer version of Windows Vista will cause the software to miss the 2006 holiday shopping season. That could have a negative impact on PCs sales for this year, analyst firm Gartner warned earlier this month.

Windows Vista is currently in beta and has been made available to a limited group of testers. The application has been feature complexe as of the last beta release. The next test version is slated for the second quarter of this year and will be available to a broader group of testers.

via vnunet