Japan’s foreign minister said Thursday that Tokyo’s claim over the disputed Kuril islands remains “absolutely unwavering” despite Russia’s decision to boost its military presence on the territory. Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, who is due to visit Moscow from Friday, said Russia’s occupation of the islands is illegal and shrugged off President Dmitry Medvedev’s... 

Iran has made yet another announcement about the development of a new type of weapon. The Iranian administration claimed that it was going to launch the mass production of new ballistic missiles. According to Chief Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the missiles, called the Persian Gulf, develop the speed of 3,675 kilometers an hour and strike targets... 

Emotions are running high in the dispute over the Kuril Islands. Russia and Japan have been divided over ownership of the islands since the 1950s, but this had long since ceased to be a hot-button issue. How can we explain the unexpected surge in interest in this largely dormant territorial dispute? The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 renewed hope that the dispute with Japan would be settled.... 

Even though on January 17, 2011 China denied plans to send troops into North Korea, yesterday on January 18, 2011 China sent troops into North Korea. A contingent of Chinese troops has reportedly been stationed for a month in the economic zone of Rajin-Sonbong in northeast North Korea. South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported a South Korean official as saying the People’s Liberation Army... 

The Fall of Labor Could Clear a Path for Attacking Iran. The splitting of the Labor Party, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak forming a new, more hawkish bloc and the less enthusiastic members likely moving into the opposition will remove from the Netanyahu government any pretense of being a “broad coalition” and will cement its right-far-right reputation at home and abroad. The fall of Labor can... 

Photographs on the internet appear to show China's stealth fighter. The US said at the weekend it would respond to the rapidly-increasing military capabilities of China by building up its own strength in the region. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, was speaking as he arrived in Beijing on Sunday for four days of talks aimed at renewing ties between the US and Chinese armed forces. However... 

Lucrative contracts threatened as agent languishes in Wandsworth prison. Britain is embroiled in a damaging diplomatic row with Mongolia over the arrest of its most senior spy which is threatening to derail relations between the two countries and freeze British companies out of contracts worth millions of pounds. Bat Khurts, who was the head of Mongolia’s counter-terrorism agency, has languished... 

China will eventually have a military powerful enough to compete with the United States, state media said ahead of the visit of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. The claim in a newspaper editorial on Friday followed reports that China had completed a prototype of a stealth fighter and after a top US military official said Beijing was stepping up efforts to deploy a “carrier-killer” missile... 

Argentina to record UFO sightings. Argentina’s Air Force has said it has received many reports of sightings by pilots and radar of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) that are a ‘potential threat to national air security’. The Air Force said often combat planes have reported following strange objects in the skies above Argentina. Even the local media have reported that dozens of photos... 

China is preparing for conflict ‘in every direction’, the defence minister said on Wednesday in remarks that threaten to overshadow a visit to Beijing by his US counterpart next month. “In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction,” said Liang Guanglie in an interview published by several state-backed... 

Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in an air raid just weeks before it went online in 2007, said a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks and published on Friday in an Israeli daily. “On September 6, 2007, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor built by Syria secretly, apparently with North Korea’s help,” then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice wrote in the cable published... 

Hugo Chavez had vowed Larry Palmer would not be US ambassador Washington has revoked the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to the US, the US state department has said. The move comes amid a diplomatic dispute between the two countries over President Barack Obama’s choice of ambassador to Caracas, Larry Palmer. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been angered by comments Mr Palmer made about... 

The mounting unemployment rate in the United States has provided an opportunity for the Pentagon to recruit more people for its unpopular wars abroad, an analyst says. In an interview with Press TV, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen referred to the high unemployment rate in the US, especially in poorer states such as Alabama. “Unemployment there is at 33 percent. It is so bad that young people... 

North Korea said the U.S. and South Korea are “inviting a nuclear war” by conducting military drills, even as a Seoul-based think tank predicted that Kim Jong Il’s regime may hold another atomic test next year. South Korea’s Dec. 20 artillery drill on Yeonpyeong Island near the disputed sea border was an intentional provocation, and North Korea is closely watching “the reckless behavior... 

South Korean soldiers patrol near Dangjin, South Korea, on Tuesday. South Korea announced new land and sea military exercises on Wednesday, including its largest-ever live-fire drill near North Korea, just as tension on the peninsula was beginning to ease after Pyongyang’s attack on a southern island. The firing drills planned for Thursday near the Koreas’ heavily armed land border signaled...