MK/JG/RE/HAR, Iran Press TV
The long-awaited Iranian Oil Bourse, a place for trading oil, petrochemicals and gas in various non-dollar currencies, will soon open.
Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters the bourse will be inaugurated during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1-11) at the latest.
"All preparations have been made to launch the bourse; it will open during the Ten-Day Dawn (the ceremonies marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran)," he said.
The Minister had earlier stated that the Oil Bourse is located on the Persian Gulf island of Kish.
Some expert opinions hold inauguration of the bourse could significantly devalue the greenback.
(4 January 2008)
Also reported at IranMania and mentioned in a report from Global Research (Jan 23, 2008). Otherwise, no reports seem to appear in the media.
-BA
Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez
Tahani Karrar, Dow Jones Newswires
A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.
Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged Wednesday leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.
"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.
The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
"It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S., the bandwidth utilization will go down," the official said.
There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while du, the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
(1 February 2008)
According to the Internet Traffic Report site, the router located in Iran (router1.iust.ac.ir) is out of commission. Looking at other reports on the site, however, one sees that several other routers are out of commission (in Africa, Florida and Columbia).
Several posts have appeared on the Internet, claiming that Iran may have been targeted.
A Reuters report on the outage doesn't mention Iran.
-BA
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