EU, Iran hold intense nuclear talks
Negotiators for Iran and the European Union held five hours of “very intense” talks Wednesday over Iran’s disputed nuclear program and planned to meet again today, officials said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani went into their meeting at a Foreign Ministry facility by the side of Lake Tegel on the outskirts of Berlin without making statements to reporters.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington that she telephoned Solana on Wednesday and renewed U.S. support for his talks with Iran.
But in Tehran, Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country won’t give up “one iota” of its right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program.
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Anna Nicole’s son died of drug combo
Anna Nicole Smith’s 20-year-old son died from a lethal combination of methadone and two antidepressant drugs, a U.S.-based pathologist who conducted a private autopsy said Wednesday.
Toxicology tests showed Daniel Smith had methadone, Zoloft and Lexapro in his system when he died Sept. 10 in a hospital room in the Bahamas where his former Playboy Playmate mother was recuperating from giving birth to a daughter, according to Cyril Wecht.
“The fact that we have these drugs and the levels of the drugs overwhelmingly and most logically point to this being a tragic, accidental, drug-related death,” Wecht told the Associated Press from his home in the Pittsburgh area.
Wecht, who performed the autopsy in the Bahamas, said Smith apparently died from a “classical” combination of the drugs which had a lethal “cumulative effect on the central nervous system.”
New Delhi
Halt demanded to tiger poaching
Environmentalists accused India and China in a stinging indictment Wednesday of doing almost nothing to stem the rapid decline of tigers in the wild, saying the big cats will likely vanish completely within a few years without government intervention.
Trade in poached Indian tigers is flourishing across the border in Chinese-controlled Tibet, where organized crime groups sell them for use in traditional medicines, ceremonial clothing and as souvenirs, according to two environmental agencies, which secretly photographed the trade.
Photos shown at a news conference Wednesday showed dozens of tiger and leopard skins openly on sale, while in others, Chinese police officers laughed and posed with people wearing clothing made of tiger skins.
The groups – the Wildlife Protection Society of India and the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit British-based group – accused the Indian and Chinese governments of failing to stop the trade.