Pop stars Donna Summer’s cancer

The pop music world was stunned Thursday by the death of Donna Summer, the original "Disco Queen" who over four decades proved that she and her music were stars, not fads.

She was 63 and reportedly had been suffering from lung cancer, although she had continued performing until recently.

Summer had a string of worldwide hits in the late 1970s, including "I Feel Love," "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," "On the Radio, "MacArthur Park," "No More Tears" and "Last Dance."

She was labeled a disco artist and while she always resisted that term, her career cooled down when a disco backlash formed around 1979.

But her music endured and more than 30 years later is still played on dance and classic hits stations. She had been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — but not chosen, something pal Elton John raged against Thursday.

Her records sound as good today as they ever did. That she has never been inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame is a total disgrace especially when I see the second-rate talent that has been inducted,” he said. “She is a great friend to me and to the Elton John AIDS Foundation and I will miss her greatly.”

"She was the face of the disco movement," says Jeff Foxx, afternoon host on WBLS. "But she bridged dance music and R&B. It may have been called disco, but there was some funky stuff going on.

"You'll still never find a better song than 'Last Dance' to end any concert. The chord progression, her singing - wow."

Iran begins uranium Ornament at new site

Hard-line newspaper close to Iran's rulers says the country has begun uranium enrichment at a well-protected underground facility. 

 Kayhan daily reported Sunday that Iran has begun enriching uranium at sophisticated centrifuges at the Fordo site near the holy city of Qom. 

 

Iran's main uranium enrichment site in Natanz in the center of the country is built partly underground, while the long-secret Fordo facility was built deep inside a mountain as a precaution from aerial attacks.

The US and its allies accuse Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Tehran, Iran has begun uranium enrichment program at a new underground site well protected from possible air strikes, a leading hard-line newspaper reported Sunday

“Kayhan received a report yesterday that shows Iran has begun uranium enrichment at the Fordo facility amid heightened foreign enemy threats,” the paper said in a front-page report. Kayhan’s manager is a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is under UN. sanctions for refusing to stop uranium enrichment that’s can produce both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material and other suspected activities that the international community fears could be used to make atomic arms.

The country has been enriching uranium to less than 5 percent for years, but it began to further enrich part of its uranium stockpile to nearly 20 percent as of February 2010, saying it needs the higher grade material to produce fuel for a Tehran reactor that makes medical radioisotopes needed for cancer patients. Weapons-grade uranium is usually about 90 percent enriched.

"The Fordo facility, like Natanz, has been designed and built underground. The enemy doesn't have the ability to damage it," the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Abbasi as saying Sunday

The US and its allies fear Iran’s ability to make its own nuclear fuel will eventually lead to atomic weapons, because the technology offers a possible pathway to weapons-grade nuclear material.

Iran says it only seeks reactors for energy and research, but refuses to halt its uranium enrichment activities. It says it needs to keep the enrichment program to produce fuel for future nuclear reactors and medical radioisotopes needed for cancer patients.