A day after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing all measures necessary short of a ground invasion to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gadhafi, a compilation of recent polls shows the war-weary American public is not eager for the United States to embark on an intervention there. President Barack Obama is due to speak about Libya sometime this afternoon prior to his departure... 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Marine Le Pen might defeat President Nicolas Sarkozy if a French election were held now, a poll showed. Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a Socialist Party member, would win 33 percent in the first round, according to the Ipsos-LogicaBusiness Consulting poll for Le Monde and Europe 1 radio. Le Pen, leader of the National Front party,... 

Smoke rises over Ajdabiya, the last major city between forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi and rebel-held Benghazi. A military intervention against Col Muammar Gaddafi’s onslaught on Libyan rebels has been proposed at the UN in an eleventh-hour attempt to stop the dictator crushing opposition strongholds. European diplomatic sources said that military operations could be under way “within hours”... 

Vladimir Zhirinovsky Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the colorful and flamboyant leader of Russia’s LDPR party, has called on Japanese to leave “the dangerous islands” and move to the unpopulated Russian territories, the newsru.com website reported on Sunday. Zhirinovsky, 64, also deputy speaker of the lower house, offered Russian government to start talks with Japan over Japanese nationals’... 

The $40billion figure during the first year of the Obama administration is an increase from the last year of the Bush government in 2008, when the State Department licensed $34.2billion. The U.S. government approved $40billion in private arms sales to countries including Libya and Egypt in 2009 – before they both dissolved into unrest this year – the State Department reported. From 2008... 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Western officials continue to emphasize an “all options on the table” military attitude toward the Gaddhafi regime in Libya, though it seems there is still enough resistance to the immediate attack called for by some top officials to keep it from actually happening. Still, the moves continue to be in that direction, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted... 

Iranian technicians are seen at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facilities (UCF), 420 kms south of the Iranian capital Tehran. China has reaffirmed Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology, urging Tehran at the same time to expand its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Li Song, the deputy head of the Department of Arms Control of China’s Foreign Ministry,... 

Sources close to the Hezbollah – which Israel and the United States regard as a terrorist group – have told G2Bulletin that the organization has devised military plans to occupy “Galilee,” or northern Israel, should the Jewish state attack Lebanon, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. A few weeks back, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a public... 

The lawmaker behind a bill Texas that would levy felony charges against overly-touchy security personnel may be staunchly Republican, but he truly believes his cause isn’t one tied to the political left or right. “We’re talking about what would be a criminal act in any other place,” Rep. David Simpson (R) told Raw Story on Monday. “If you viewed someone naked without... 

Western cuts and swiftly rising defence spending in emerging economies are redrawing the global strategic map, a leading think-tank said on Tuesday, with the danger of conflicts between states also rising. In its annual Global Military Balance report, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said the shift in economic power was already beginning to have a real military... 

On Wednesday, March 2nd, Commander of the Basij organization, Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Naghdi spoke at a conference of specialist working groups of Basiji corps of engineers. “Seventy percent of the world’s fossil fuel reserve is under the feet of the soldiers of the Supreme Leadership and soon oil and gas fields belonging to Muslims, which is now in the hands of America will fall into... 

A grim report issued today by the Russian Agriculture Ministry warns that wheat plantings in the country, once the World’s second-biggest exporter, will drop 2.3 percent to 64.2 million acres for this year’s crop due to last summers historic drought and the soaring cost of oil and the fertilizer made from it. The Bloomberg News Service further warns about this report that this absence of Russian... 

At least 92 people have been killed in clashes between South Sudanese troops and two rebel militias on Sunday and Monday. Fighting in Jonglei state left 14 rebels and seven soldiers dead on Monday, and the death toll from neighbouring Upper Nile state on Sunday has risen to 72, according to SPLA spokesman Philip Aguer. Auger said 65 rebels were killed in Sunday’s clashes between the Southern... 

Courting controversy: New German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich who has waded into the row over German immigration. Germany’s new interior minister has waded straight into controversy by claiming that Islam is not a key part of the German way of life. Hans-Peter Friedrich, who took office last week in a cabinet reshuffle, stoked an increasingly serious row about immigration in his country... 

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) refused Sunday to retreat from her characterization of the Obama administration as a “gangster government.” The House Tea Party Caucus founder said, “I don’t take back my statement on gangster government,” a phrase she used at a tea party gathering in April. “I think that there have been actions that have been taken by this government...