Last week the North vowed "merciless retaliatory strikes" if any shells landed in waters claimed by Pyongyang during a live-fire artillery exercise near the disputed Yellow Sea border North Korea has threatened to stage a ‘sacred war’ over US-South Korean annual joint military exercises next week, denouncing the drill as a ‘silent declaration of war’. The North’s... 

Frontline Ltd.'s supertanker 'Front Shanghai' The International Energy Agency (IEA) says China has bought an additional 200,000 barrels per day of Iran’s oil in recent months. Didier Houssin, IEA director of energy markets and security, said on Tuesday that Beijing is the world’s second-biggest crude consumer and may continue to increase oil imports from Iran. “China has been... 

US and its allies are pushing Syria into civil war by backing the armed opposition, the newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party writes. The article insists Beijing must stick to opposing any attempt to intervene or regime change in Damascus. ­”If Western countries continue to fully support Syria’s opposition, then in the end a large-scale civil war will erupt and there will... 

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak (L) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda at the latter's official residence in Tokyo on February 15, 2012. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has warned Israel against the ramifications of launching a military strike on Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program. Noda told visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak... 

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has announced his country is committed to preventing war and chaos in the crisis-hit Syria. “On the issue of Syria, what is most urgent and pressing now is to prevent war and chaos,” Wen said on Tuesday. “To achieve this objective, China supports efforts consistent with the UN charter and principles and we are ready... 

Indian security and forensic officials examine a car belonging to the Israel embassy after the explosion in New Delhi, India, on February 13, 2012. The Israel embassies in India and Georgia have been targeted by bomb attacks, with one bomb going off in New Delhi and injuring two people, and the second device in Tbilisi defused. In New Delhi, the wife of an Israeli diplomat was injured when an embassy... 

China’s space agency has unveiled a unique detailed map illustrating the best view of the lunar surface ever seen by a Chinese spacecraft. The map is made up of high-resolution photos taken by China’s second lunar probe, Chang’e 2 orbiter, which have been stitched together into a complete view. “The Chang’e 2 lunar map is the highest-resolution view of the moon ever recorded,”... 

Iran is ready to complete and inaugurate the proposed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project ahead of the due date, the vice president for international affairs said in Islamabad today. In a meeting with Pakistani finance officials, Ali Saeedlou said that Iran is prepared to help Pakistan establish the pipeline ahead of the date the two sides have agreed upon, IRNA news agency reported. Despite the threat... 

Indian business delegation will visit Tehran in the end of February to boost oil imports from the Islamic Republic. India plans to send a business delegation to Iran to hold talks aimed at increasing the volume of Tehran’s oil exports to New Delhi, a report says. “We will need to lead a business delegation there, taking potential exporters across a range of sectors, and go out there and... 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Despite Beijing’s outright refusal to join the EU and US-sponsored unilateral sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has arranged a visit to China to convince the country to reduce Iranian oil import. A German government source told a news briefing on Tuesday that “It is in German interests that China does not raise its imports... 

Water leaks from 14 points at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s facilities have been found, leading the operator to suspend the cooling of the spent fuel pool at its No. 4 reactor for two hours, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) was quoted by local media as reporting on Monday. The leakage is believed to have been caused by the freezing cold weather, and the leaked water included... 

A senior political analyst says Moscow and Beijing should not just sit by and watch the current anti-Iran threats and moves by the West as they are bound to be the next targets, Press TV reports. “People like Russia and China had better figure out that if they just sit there and let these things happen, eventually they’ll be next,” Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and historian, said in an... 

Avian Influenza, or A H5N1, has a mortality rate among humans of twenty to thirty times that of Spanish Flu which killed up to fifth million people in 1918/1919 and would be far, far worse than even the Black Death which assailed Europe in the fourteenth century. The spread of new cases is alarming, constant and deadly. Humankind must watch bird flu like a hawk…and not only. We saw what the... 

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has warned that the Sumatran elephant could be extinct in less than 30 years as half of the species’ population has been lost in one generation. According to a statement issued by WWF, an estimated number of 2,400 to 2,800 Sumatran elephants are alive that is down about 50 percent from a 1985 estimate. “The Sumatran elephant joins a growing list of Indonesian... 

New Western sanctions seek to prevent other countries from importing Iran's crude oil. India has agreed to pay the price of crude oil it imports from Iran in gold, which makes it the first country to drop the US dollar for purchasing the Iranian oil. According to a report published by DEBKAfile news website, unnamed sources have stressed that China is also expected to follow suit. India and China...