in the news this week

MEXICO CITY (AP) - President Vicente Fox refused to apologize Monday for saying Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won't - a comment widely viewed as acceptable in a country where blackface comedy is still considered funny and nicknames often reflect skin color.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran is circumventing international export bans on sensitive dual-use materials by smuggling graphite and a graphite compound that can be used to make conventional and nuclear weapons, an Iranian dissident and a senior diplomat said Friday.

UNITED NATIONS - Stating that the United Nations needs "nothing less than a transformation," the organization's chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, told Congress yesterday that reform could be achieved only by increasing funding and reducing American interference at Turtle Bay.(NY SUN)

Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London. (Luke David, Evening Standard)

A satellite survey shows that between 1992 and 2003, the East Antarctic ice sheet gained about 45 billion tonnes of ice. (News@Nature.com)

"The Sunnis and the Shiites, the Kurds and all the various tribes can work out accommodations that will allow them to build a stable society, I think that will be good for Iraq and good for the Middle East," (X-President Bill)Clinton said at the end of a two-day visit to Denmark.(Yahoo News)

WASHINGTON, May 17 - The Bush administration kept up the pressure today on Newsweek magazine to do something beyond retracting an article asserting that investigators had confirmed the desecration of a Koran by American interrogators trying to unsettle Muslim detainees.” There is lasting damage to our image because of this report," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said at a news briefing. "And we would encourage Newsweek to do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region.” (NYT).

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, in its hardest stance yet, warned China on Tuesday that it likely will be accused of manipulating its currency to gain an unfair trade advantage over the United States — unless Beijing acts swiftly to overhaul its currency system. (Yahoo News)

Industry analysts say the refining shortage hits especially hard in the U.S. Refiners here haven't built a new plant since 1976, and remain reluctant to do so for a variety of reasons, including public resistance, expected returns on investment and environmental regulations.(WSJ)

BRUSSELS – European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet delivered a newly pessimistic view of the euro-zone economy, saying Europe faces "relatively high uncertainty" and signaling that the bank will probably downgrade its growth forecast for a second time this year. (WSJ)

Opinion polls put the "No" camp ahead in France as well as in the Netherlands, which votes on the treaty on June 1, raising the prospect of a double rejection which could hold up European integration and cause jitters on financial markets. (Timothy Heritage, Yahoo news)

Nonetheless, we are going to have a tech rally before this year is out. Reason: We always do -- at least we have for the past six out of seven years -- with one exception, 2000. And that year doesn't count because it was the market implosion of a lifetime. (Barron’s)

In fact, Goldman predicts that a tech rally "could start even earlier this year, [as] investors could see a green light" after they clear any potentially negative second-quarter pre-announcements by early to mid-July. However, Goldman adds, investors will still need to "slog" through summer, in some cases, because Europe continues to be weaker than North America. (Barron’s)

Only 42 inches wide, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan was supposed to alter global oil markets forever. The 1,000-mile project has transformed the geopolitics of the Caucasus and its impact is now being felt in the vastness of central Asia…..Its architects and investors claimed the pipeline would shore up energy supplies in the US and Europe for 50 years, protecting our gas-guzzling way of life and easing our reliance on the House of Saud. (The Independent)

(CNSNews.com) - In a major achievement for the Caucasus and a strategic victory for the U.S., one of the world's longest oil pipelines has come on line, providing the region with its first outlet to world oil markets that bypasses Russia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline "can help generate balanced economic growth, and provide a foundation for a prosperous and just society that advances the cause of freedom," President Bush said in a message, read by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at the inauguration ceremony Wednesday.