EU US DIFFER ON IRAN

EU and US strike different tones on Iran 49 minutes ago

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union struck different tones on Saturday on how to respond to Iran's nuclear defiance while insisting they were in full agreement. Speaking at a transatlantic conference, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said no one was considering military action over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment and Europe did not want to join a "coalition of the willing" against Iran. Influential U.S. Senator John McCain told the Brussels Forum in a speech on Friday night: "There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.

He said the United States would not stand by and let Iran wipe out Israel, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinjenad had called for. The Islamic republic, a major oil and gas producer, denies it aims to build a bomb and says its programme is purely for civilian energy purposes. Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, a leading Democratic foreign policy expert, said the response to Iran's nuclear programme, which the West says is aimed at making weapons, was a defining issue for transatlantic relations. Iran is THE test case about whether we'll have effective transatlantic cooperation," Holbrooke said. The more divisions there were in the West and with China and Russia over Iran, the more likely it was that the United States would face the terrible choice painted by McCain, he said.

UNITED?

Solana, who has been involved in efforts by the EU's three main powers, Britain, France and Germany, to negotiate a solution with Tehran, said he did not believe there were differences between the United States and Europe on Iran. NATO and EU foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had debated the issue at a meeting in Sofia on Thursday and "nobody at that point in time considered the possibility of a military solution in Iran. He said he did not believe anyone was seeking a "coalition of the willing" to act against Iran and no European country wanted that. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried said the next step was a strong U.N. Security Council resolution. I cannot predict how things will come out, but that is where we are headed, united with Europe," he told reporters.

Asked why he was unwilling to talk of military action unlike McCain and Holbrooke, Solana said that he held political office and did not have the same freedom of speech. The most important thing was to work with Russia and China to build the broadest possible consensus on a United Nations resolution raising pressure on Tehran to comply with international demands to halt nuclear enrichment. The U.N. nuclear watchdog delivered a report on Friday saying Iran had done little or nothing to prove it was not developing nuclear arms. It had hampered checks by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and rebuffed requests to stop making nuclear fuel, the report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.

NASA launches climate satellites By Irene Klotz Fri Apr 28, 6:48 AM ET

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA on Friday launched two research satellites to help scientists refine computer models that forecast the weather and chart global climate change. CloudSat and CALIPSO blasted off aboard an unmanned Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 6:02 a.m. EDT (1002 GMT) after a week of delays for weather and technical issues. The Boeing-built booster originally had been slated to fly last year, but a machinists' strike forced several months of delays. CloudSat has powerful radar instruments to peer deep into the structure of clouds and map their water content. Although only about 1 percent of Earth's water is held in clouds, it plays a crucial role in the planet's weather, scientists working on the mission said.

CloudSat will answer basic questions about how rain and snow are produced by clouds, how rain and snow are distributed worldwide, and how clouds affect the Earth's climate," principal investigator Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University said. Using instruments 1,000 times more powerful than common meteorology radar CloudSat was designed to render three-dimensional maps of clouds that will identify the location and form of water molecules. Complementary and virtually simultaneous studies by sister probe CALIPSO will pinpoint aerosol particles and track how they interact with clouds and move through the atmosphere. CALIPSO is an acronym for Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations.

Aerosols are formed by natural phenomena like forest fires and human activity such as driving cars. Aerosols are considered a key factor in understanding why the planet is growing warmer and if anything can be done to stem or reverse the change.Computer models predict average surface temperatures on Earth will increase between 3.5 degrees Celsius and 9 degrees F over the next 100 years. The uncertainty stems from the role clouds play in moderating heat. Aerosols in the clouds can either cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back into space, or increase temperatures by trapping heat in the atmosphere. We need to understand the aerosol effect on climate because it counteracts the effects of greenhouse gases," said CALIPSO principal investigator David Winker of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.