Glad tidings from Baghdad at last. The Iraqi parliament has gone into summer recess without passing the oil law that Washington was pressing it to adopt. For the Bush administration this is irritating, since passage of the law was billed as a "benchmark" in its battle to get Congress not to set a timetable for US troop withdrawals. The political hoops through which the government of Nouri al-Maliki has been asked to jump were meant to be a companion piece to the US "surge". Just as General David... (more)
We arrived in New York earlier this month. Salee and her father are now in South Carolina, and we have every hope that she'll be walking again soon with the aid of double prosthesis... (more)
Russia will fire the starting gun on the world’s last colonial scramble today when a submarine plants a flag under the North Pole to symbolize the Kremlin’s claim to the Arctic and its vast energy resources.
In an unprecedented and potentially perilous mission, veteran Arctic explorer Artur Chilingarov will descend 14,000 feet in a deep sea submersible and drop a Russian tricolor cast in titanium onto the seabed.
About 390 CIA-run flights through German airspace were in violation of German law, and Berlin could have collected millions of euros in fines. Now internal investigations could make things embarrassing for Gerhard Schröder's government as well as the United States.
When air traffic controllers hear the code words "ATFM exempt," they know to expect something drastic. Airlines use the code to report a flight when it has sick or severely injured passengers -- or heads of state -... (more)
A controversial new Middle East oil law could lead to the “disintegration” of Iraq as a nation state. Two of the region’s most respected commentators, including the co-author of the new Iraq Oil Law and a former oil minister, have each exp... (more)
The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense Department figures obtained by The Times. Including the ... (more)
The new European Union treaty will mean "transfers of sovereignty" from Britain and Gordon Brown is right to hide the fact from the public, an EU leader admitted yesterday.
Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier and leader of the bloc of 13 single currency members, spoke out as the Prime Minister faced rising calls for a referendum on the treaty drawn up following the rejection of the old EU constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
It was intended to be a radical departure in global news coverage, and few could argue that in this, at least, it succeeded. Iran's new state-run English-language 24-hour news channel, which launched yesterday, was aimed at viewers in the US and Europe, its director said. But despite the clipped English tones of its anchorman, Henry Morton - "Salaam, and welcome" - the channel, called Press TV, still needed to learn a thing or two about western attention spans.
President Hugo Chávez yesterday hinted that Venezuela could try to become a nuclear power, during a visit to Russia apparently timed to antagonise the White House.
Mr Chávez defended Iran's right to pursue a nuclear programme and said it might be a good idea if Venezuela eventually did the same thing. Speaking before an audience of communists and other elements hostile to America, Mr Chávez said: "Iran has a right to have a peaceful atomic energy industry, as... (more)
Iran's defense minister has described the US neocons as the main enemies of democracy who resort to inhumane acts to crush independent nations.
Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar made the remarks at a meeting with the families of a group of Iranian high-ranking officials who were martyred in a terrorist attack in 1981.
The US-funded terrorist rings have launched tremendous attacks against Iran, including the assassination of Iranian o... (more)
Lebanon's senior cleric has said the explosions in Iraq's revered Shia shrine in Samarra are part of US conspiracies against Iraq.
According to Iran's Al-Alam news channel, Allameh Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said Thursday that it is essential for all Muslim leaders, whether Sunni or Shia, to denounce the savage crime and bring dishonor on Salafi Takfiri groups as well as the occupation forces.
There's no proof that Iranian government is supplying weapons to Taliban, US Defense Secretary was forced to admit today, contradicting a statement by State Department official who accused the Iranian government of transferring the weapons.
"I have seen analysis suggesting a considerable flow of weapons and support from Iran," Gates Robert Gates told reporters in Bruss... (more)
Hamas has uncovered a trove of thousands of documents, including classified correspondence with Israeli forces.
After seizing the Palestinian Authority's Security headquarters in Gaza City on Thursday afternoon, Hamas fighters report they have seized tens of thousands of sensitive intelligence documents, including correspondence between the PA, the American CIA, and the Zionists regarding security issues.
Hamas officials said the newly found information would help t... (more)
Russian president Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for a radical overhaul of the world’s financial and trade institutions to reflect the growing economic power of emerging market countries – including Russia.
Mr Putin said the world needed to create a new international financial architecture to replace an existing model that had become “archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy”.
His apparent challenge to western dominance of... (more)
It looks highly likely that a false flag terror attack to be blamed on protesters of the G8 summit in Germany was averted after German surveillance stopped a team of "US security men" attempting to smuggle C4 plastic explosives past a checkpoint at Heiligendamm.
The alarming revelation was buried at the end of a Deutsche Press-Agentur news article about the ongoing battles between police and protesters at the global forum. ... (more)
