Russia supplies roughly a quarter of the EU’s natural gas

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said his decision to recognise Georgia’s breakaway regions as independent is irrevocable.

On the eve of a special EU summit on Georgia, he warned that Russia was ready to retaliate against any sanctions the EU might impose.

Germany and the UK have differed in tone over how the EU should proceed, with Berlin warning against escalation.

Moscow’s envoy to London said sanctions would hurt the EU more than Russia.

Ambassador Yuri Fedotov told the BBC that Russia did not want any further confrontation and was not seeking a new Cold War.

He was speaking after UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called in a newspaper article for a fundamental review of relations with Russia to prevent further “Russian aggression”.

But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said unilateral actions by both Russia and Georgia had worsened the crisis.

Russia’s four-day war with Georgia began on 7 August when Georgia tried to regain control of its breakaway South Ossetia province by force and Russia counter-attacked deep into Georgia.

‘Equal partner’

Speaking to Russian TV channels in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Mr Medvedev also promised military and economic aid to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

We do not favour sanctions on the whole and only resort to them in extreme circumstances Dmitry Medvedev Russian president

On the possibility of sanctions against Russia, he said:

“We do not favour sanctions on the whole and only resort to them in extreme circumstances. [But] if required, we could pass the relevant legislation.”

The EU gets about a quarter of its natural gas from Russia, which is also a major oil exporter.

Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told Reuters news agency Moscow had no plans to use energy supplies as a political tool, and said the prospect of any EU sanctions was “highly improbable”.

Ambassador Fedotov told the BBC that “any sanctions [would] hurt the European Union first of all much more than Russia”.

Mr Fedotov also argued that the world needed to understand what the modern, post-Soviet Russia was about.

“Russia wants to be an equal partner… but the partnership should not be the kind of partnership between the horseman and horse, but of two equal individuals,” he said.

‘Beyond the current day’

Georgian demonstrators are planning to hold rallies in Tbilisi and in other European capitals to coincide with the special EU summit in Brussels when it opens at 1100 GMT on Monday.

My message to Russia is simple: …you must accept that with rights come responsibilities Gordon Brown UK prime minister UK warns over ‘Russia aggression’

It was called by France, which currently chairs the EU and brokered a peace deal between Russia and Georgia.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the BBC that Paris did not support sanctions but the views of all EU members would have to be taken into account.

“The situation is very difficult and… we must be firm on our position in offering a line defending, of course, territorial integrity of Georgia,” he said.

Mr Brown said both the EU and Nato should review their ties with Russia

“When Russia has a grievance over an issue such as South Ossetia, it should act multilaterally by consent rather than unilaterally by force,” he said.

“My message to Russia is simple: If you want to be welcome at the top table of organisations such as the G8, OECD and WTO, you must accept that with rights come responsibilities.”

Germany’s foreign minister said that “the dangerous spiral of violence [over Georgia] must be stopped”.

“We need a strong and sensible European role to allow a return to reason and responsibility,” he said.

Speaking earlier in the week, Mr Steinmeier rejected the idea of sanctions, saying “someone should first tell me what a sanction against Russia could be”.

“Particularly in such a serious political situation, it is necessary to show a bit of common sense,” he said.

“We will continue to have Russia as our neighbour also beyond the current day, and it is in our own interest to return to a normal relationship.”

Could this sight continue for several years to come?

Nasa will study whether the space shuttle can operate beyond its planned retirement in 2010, reports say.

The agency will look at what might be required to delay the retirement of its fleet until the shuttle’s replacement – Ares-Orion – begins flying in 2015.

The exercise is aimed at answering questions it expects on the matter from Congress and the incoming president.

News of the study comes from a leaked internal email obtained by a Florida-based newspaper.

Nasa chief Michael Griffin, who is reported to have ordered the study, had previously opposed extending the shuttle programme.

The agency’s administrator argued that the money and effort required to do so would stymie progress on the Ares rockets and the Apollo-style Orion capsules that will succeed the shuttle.

These are being developed by Nasa as part of its “Constellation” programme. The system is expected to carry astronauts to the Moon under the Vision for Space Exploration plans announced by President George W Bush in 2004.

Russian flights

In April, Dr Griffin told a Senate sub-committee: “The shuttle is an inherently risky design. We currently assess the per-mission risk as about one in 75 of having a fatal accident.

“If one were to do, as some have suggested, fly the shuttle for an additional five years – say two missions a year – the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew.”

But an e-mail obtained by the Orlando Sentinel suggests Nasa will now research this option.

In it, John Coggeshall, manifest and schedules manager at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, writes: “The [shuttle] programme in conjunction with [Constellation] and [space station] have been asked by the administrator to put together some manifest options to assess extending shuttle flights to 2015.

He added: “We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles travelling to the [space station] as efficiently as possible.”

But Nasa spokesman John Yembrick described the e-mail as “premature”.

“The parameters of the study have not yet been defined,” he said.

The agency remains committed to retiring the shuttle in 2010.

Five-year gap

In the five-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the first flights of the Orion capsule, Nasa will be reliant on Russia’s Soyuz system for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

But some are now concerned about the wisdom of this plan to purchase seats aboard the Soyuz, given the diplomatic tension between the US and Russia over the conflict in Georgia.

Nasa’s Orion ship will not be ready until 2015

Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and other senators, sent a letter urging President Bush to “direct Nasa to take no action for at least one year from now that would preclude the extended use of the space shuttle beyond 2010″.

This letter said Russia’s conduct during the Georgia conflict “raised concerns about the reliability of Russia as a partner for the International Space Station”.

It added: “Our concern is that we do not have a guarantee that such co-operative and mutually beneficial activity will continue to be available, and the successful utilisation of the ISS may thus be jeopardized.”

The Democrats’ presidential candidate Barack Obama has also talked about the possibility of additional shuttle flights to close the five-year gap.

Nasa currently has an agreement with Russia to fly astronauts to the ISS aboard the Soyuz spacecraft until 2011. After that, the agency would have to seek approval from Congress for an extension.

Nasa has previously said it would cost between $2.5bn and $4bn per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010.

The agency has also given seed money to a commercial venture to develop a spacecraft for transporting crew and cargo to the space station.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Two award-winning feature-length Iranian films are scheduled to be screened at international film festivals in Europe and Africa.

Asqar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday will participate in the Carthage International Film festival, to be held from Oct. 25 to Nov. 1, 2008, in Tunisia.

Fireworks Wednesday has received numerous international awards including the 2006 Best Director award at India’s Kerala International Film Festival and the 2007 Best Feature award of Las Palmas International Film Festival.

Saman Salour’s From the Land of Silence will be screened at Germany’s Around the World in 14 Films, to be held from Nov. 28 to Dec. 6, 2008.

Residents wait to board buses to evacuate New Orleans

New Orleans residents have begun to evacuate the city as the ‘storm of the century’ takes aim at the Louisiana coast in southern US.

New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, has ordered the mandatory evacuation of more than 239,000 residents in order to avoid a replay of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe.

On August 29, 2005, the city of New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina – a Category 3 storm.

Katrina, the third-strongest hurricane ever to hit the US, caused more than 1,600 deaths, while flooding about 85 percent of the city.

Calling Gustav ‘the mother of all storms’, Nagin urged citizens not commit ‘one of the biggest mistakes’ of their life by seeking to ride out the storm.

“This is not the one to play with,” he said.

Gustav has already killed 81 people by triggering floods and landslides in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

Gustav’s projection path toward New Orleans, LA

The US National Hurricane Center says Gustav has slightly weakened after sweeping across Cuba, where at least 300,000 Cubans fled its screaming 140mph (220kph) path.

Gustav is projected to regain strength, as it moves over warm water, to a top-scale Category 5 hurricane later Sunday before its expected landfall near the west of New Orleans on Monday.

Category 5 is the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale used to rate tropical cyclones – with winds above 155 mph (249kph).

At 4 a.m. CDT, Gustav was 425 miles southeast of New Orleans and moving northwest at 16 mph.

President Bush has pre-emptively declared states of emergency for Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama in a bid to clear the way for federal aid to supplement state and local efforts and formalize coordination.

The Bush administration did the same before Hurricane Katrina, which was severely criticized for slow, botched response that exacerbated disaster, leaving hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the aftermath of the 2005 storm.

Duma State Deputy Sergey Markov

The following is Press TV’s exclusive interview with Russia’s Duma State Deputy Sergey Markov.

Press TV: Mr. Markov, looking at the situation, this conflict has so far produced a spiral of action-reaction from both sides. The larger danger here is one side taking an action and the other side reacting strongly to it, perhaps militarily. Is this where this is ultimately heading?

Markov: I wouldn’t agree. I think that the real part of the conflict is Russia and the United States, and they did react already. Too much. Now they change by using strong words but no actions. Russia withdrew its troops, and we see that the US reaction is also not so sharp. That’s why we can predict that maybe there will be no development in this conflict. It is really a conflict between Russia and the United States because of the United States initiative. We predicted that maybe the Washington administration will make another provocation. Maybe they will give weapons to the war criminal, Mikhail Saakashvili, but we believe that before this criminal regime of Mikhail Saakashvili will be armed and equipped again, the election campaign in the United States will be over and the new president will be not so interested in this war in the Caucasus because the main goal is the election of John McCain and stopping Barack Obama in the United States presidential elections.

Press TV:One of those candidates is Senator John McCain and he has been urging that Russia be asked to leave the G8, there’s also been talk of barring Russia from joining the World Trade Organization there’s talk about the collapse of the US-Russia civil nuclear agreement, where does Russia stand on various agreements with the US?

Markov: Russia wants to have this nuclear agreement, to have opportunity for the trade in nuclear area and to sell nuclear materials which stay after part of the nuclear disarmament.

And so Russia and the economy want to get more money and we know that this administration, administration of the United States, is trying to allow it, Russia trying to undermine. But not only Russia, I think every country in the world has problems with this George Bush administration… and maybe most countries in the world because of the policy of this Bush-Cheney administration has caused the rising of anti-Americanism in every country in the whole world.

And the whole world believes that Americans will kick these neocons out of the White House and will give power to Barack Obama who will not be a president of war but a president of peace.