AP signs exclusive deal for HD video from NKorea (AP)

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press Tomoko A. Hosaka, Associated Press – Thu Sep 29, 2:44 am ET

TOKYO – Associated Press President and Chief Executive Tom Curley said Thursday the agency has signed an exclusive deal to provide high definition news video from North Korea to broadcasters worldwide.

In a speech in Tokyo, Curley unveiled the three-year agreement with North Korean state broadcaster KRT and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

"Today's announcement means that AP will be the only news agency to transmit broadcast quality HD video of key events in North Korea," he said at the Japan National Press Club.

Associated Press Television News will also have exclusive rights to deliver HD video feeds for individual broadcasters wishing to transmit their own reports from North Korea.

The infrastructure will be established ahead of 2012, when the so-called Hermit Kingdom celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late leader Kim Il Sung.

The deal extends AP's recent push into North Korea to a level unmatched by any other Western news organization.

AP announced in June that it had also signed a series of agreements with the Korea Central News Agency, including one for the opening of a comprehensive news bureau in Pyongyang.

Expected to launch early next year, the office would be the first permanent text and photo bureau operated by a Western news organization in the North Korean capital. It would build upon the AP's existing video news bureau, which opened in Pyongyang in 2006.

In addition, the agencies signed a contract designating the AP as the exclusive international distributor of contemporary and historical video from KCNA's archive. The agencies also plan a joint photo exhibition in New York next year. They already had an agreement between them to distribute KCNA photo archives to the global market, signed earlier this year.

"This is a historic and watershed development," Curley said. "For AP, it extends further and deeper our global reach and shows the trust that is at the core of AP reporting. For the world, it means opening the door to a better understanding between the DPRK and the rest of the world."

The latest deal also highlights AP's broader digital transformation efforts in a rapidly evolving media landscape.

AP, which sees video as a critical part of its future, is investing at least $30 million into its video business. Under an 18-month plan, the agency is upgrading all infrastructure to eventually provide HD video that "will fit easily into digital platforms of any media customer anywhere."

Curley told the group of Japanese journalists that while the U.S. is "ground zero" for the digital media shift, "the movement of information consumption to online platforms and devices is here to stay, and it will inevitably upend traditional forms of media everywhere in the world."

Founded in 1846, the AP maintains bureaus in some 100 countries around the world and is the oldest and largest of the world's major news agencies.

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Japan grants NKorea defectors temporary refuge (AP)

TOKYO – Officials say Japan has granted temporary refuge to nine suspected North Korean defectors who were found in a small wooden boat off Japan's western coast.

They say the defectors — three men, three women and three boys — were given temporary landing permits and were flown Wednesday to an immigration office where authorities are considering their request to be sent to South Korea.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura hinted that the government is leaning toward granting the group's request.

North Korean defections to Japan are rare. The last two reported cases were in 2007 and 1987. North Korean defectors typically cross into China or take boats directly to South Korea.

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UN nuke agency meets on Iran, Syria, NKorea, Japan - The Associated Press

UN nuke agency meets on Iran, Syria, NKorea, JapanBy GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press – 5 hours ago 

VIENNA (AP) — The head of the U.N. nuclear agency on Monday announced plans to publish new information backing up his belief that Iran may be working on a nuclear warhead — developments that leave his organization "increasingly concerned."

The comments by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano were significant because it was the first time he revealed plans to release some of the most recent knowledge available to the IAEA leading to such worries. Such new intelligence would likely be detailed in the next report on Iran's nuclear activities in November.

Speaking at the start of a five-day meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board, Amano also reiterated that — despite Syrian denials — a target hit in 2007 by Israeli warplanes was a nearly completed nuclear reactor meant to produce plutonium, which can be used to arm nuclear warheads.

At the same time, he announced that his staff would meet with Syrian officials next month to work out an "action plan" allowing Damascus to make good on promises to present new information on the site in its attempts to prove that the structure was a non-nuclear military facility.

He also had some positive words for Iran, saying it had demonstrated "greater transparency" than usual, in allowing a senior IAEA official to tour previously restricted nuclear sites last month.

At the same time, Amano urged the Islamic Republic to show more openness on other nuclear issues of concern. The agency, he said, "continues to receive new information" about Iranian attempts to develop a nuclear warhead, adding that he hoped "to set out in greater details the basis for the agency's concerns" in the near future.

Amano had already said he was "increasingly concerned" about possible warhead experiments by Iran in a report made available to The Associated Press earlier this month, when it was also shared with board members and the U.N. Security Council.

The phrase "increasingly concerned" — was also used by Amano in his remarks to the board Monday. It has not appeared in previous reports discussing Iran's alleged nuclear weapons work and reflects the frustration felt by him over the lack of progress in his investigations.

In its report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said "many member states" are providing evidence for that assessment, describing the information it is receiving as credible, "extensive and comprehensive."

The report also said Tehran had started installing equipment to enrich uranium at a new location — an underground bunker that is better protected from air attack than its present enrichment facilities.

Enrichment can produce both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material, and Tehran — which says it wants only to produce fuel with the technology — is under four sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment.

It also denies secretly experimenting with a nuclear weapons program and has blocked a four-year attempt by the IAEA to follow up on intelligence that it secretly designed blueprints linked to a nuclear payload on a missile, experimented with exploding a nuclear charge, and conducted work on other components of a weapons program.

In a 2007 estimate, the U.S. intelligence community said that while Iran had worked on a weapons program such activities appeared to have ceased in 2003. But diplomats say a later intelligence summary avoided such specifics, and recent IAEA reports on the topic have expressed growing unease that such activities may be continuing.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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UN nuke agency meets on Iran, Syria, NKorea, Japan (AP)

VIENNA – The head of the U.N. nuclear agency on Monday announced plans to publish new information backing up his belief that Iran may be working on a nuclear warhead — developments that leave his organization "increasingly concerned."

The comments by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano were significant because it was the first time he revealed plans to release some of the most recent knowledge available to the IAEA leading to such worries. Such new intelligence would likely be detailed in the next report on Iran's nuclear activities in November.

Speaking at the start of a five-day meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board, Amano also reiterated that — despite Syrian denials — a target hit in 2007 by Israeli warplanes was a nearly completed nuclear reactor meant to produce plutonium, which can be used to arm nuclear warheads.

At the same time, he announced that his staff would meet with Syrian officials next month to work out an "action plan" allowing Damascus to make good on promises to present new information on the site in its attempts to prove that the structure was a non-nuclear military facility.

He also had some positive words for Iran, saying it had demonstrated "greater transparency" than usual, in allowing a senior IAEA official to tour previously restricted nuclear sites last month.

At the same time, Amano urged the Islamic Republic to show more openness on other nuclear issues of concern. The agency, he said, "continues to receive new information" about Iranian attempts to develop a nuclear warhead, adding that he hoped "to set out in greater details the basis for the agency's concerns" in the near future.

Amano had already said he was "increasingly concerned" about possible warhead experiments by Iran in a report made available to The Associated Press earlier this month, when it was also shared with board members and the U.N. Security Council.

The phrase "increasingly concerned" — was also used by Amano in his remarks to the board Monday. It has not appeared in previous reports discussing Iran's alleged nuclear weapons work and reflects the frustration felt by him over the lack of progress in his investigations.

In its report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said "many member states" are providing evidence for that assessment, describing the information it is receiving as credible, "extensive and comprehensive."

The report also said Tehran had started installing equipment to enrich uranium at a new location — an underground bunker that is better protected from air attack than its present enrichment facilities.

Enrichment can produce both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material, and Tehran — which says it wants only to produce fuel with the technology — is under four sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment.

It also denies secretly experimenting with a nuclear weapons program and has blocked a four-year attempt by the IAEA to follow up on intelligence that it secretly designed blueprints linked to a nuclear payload on a missile, experimented with exploding a nuclear charge, and conducted work on other components of a weapons program.

In a 2007 estimate, the U.S. intelligence community said that while Iran had worked on a weapons program such activities appeared to have ceased in 2003. But diplomats say a later intelligence summary avoided such specifics, and recent IAEA reports on the topic have expressed growing unease that such activities may be continuing.

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