Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program instead of complying with a U.N. Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, the U.N nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday. The finding clears the path for harsher Security Council sanctions against Tehran.
“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency, basing its information on material [...]

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has strongly denied the possible suspension of the uranium enrichment research, the Itar-Tass News Agency reported.
“The [uranium enrichment] moratorium is totally unacceptable, from our point of view,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Sunday, according to the Tass report.
“A moratorium, even the one for three months, does not meet [...]

From the time Iran masters the enrichment of uranium, it could be as little as 12 months until the Islamic Republic is able to field an operational nuclear weapon, an Israeli professor said this week.
Professor Gerald Steinberg of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) said that separating the fissile material from natural uranium through [...]

Iran was still studying Russia’s proposal to establish a joint venture for uranium enrichment, Iran’s ambassador to Russia said on Wednesday.
The proposal, which Russia offered to Iran at the end of last year, “is being discussed now” and “has been confirmed by Iran’s leaders,” the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Iranian Ambassador Gholam Reza Ansari [...]

Iran said yesterday it would reply Aug. 22 to the Western incentive package to stop enriching uranium, but it also issued a veiled threat, indicating Tehran will not accept any deal that dilutes its nuclear program.
The statement by the Supreme National Security Council was Iran’s first mention of a precise date after weeks of [...]

Uranium is being mined illegally at a site in Congo that provided the radioactive material for the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, U.N. experts reported on Thursday.
The Shinkolobwe mine in mineral-rich Katanga province in southwestern Congo was ordered shut down by U.N. investigators in 2004 who found it unsafe to operate.
The investigators, [...]

Oil surged to a record high above $76 a barrel on Thursday on renewed worries over supply from major exporter Nigeria and as conflict between Israel and Lebanon heightened international tensions.
Prices also rose as the Iran nuclear row headed back to the U.N. Security Council, North Korea walked out of talks with South Korea and [...]

Crude-oil futures rose Monday on the heels of a rally in gasoline that brokers attributed to a shipping snag along the U.S. Gulf Coast that was having some impact on refinery operations.
The Coast Guard said Sunday that only limited tug and barge traffic had resumed through the Calcasieu Ship Channel, which had been off limits [...]