World

Russia's foreign minister told NATO on Thursday that both sides benefited from joint cooperation and he pointedly raised the issue of Russian transit support for Alliance forces in Afghanistan.

Iran plans to send its first astronaut into space within the next decade, the head of the Iran Aerospace Organization said on Wednesday.

The humanitarian situation in the South Ossetian conflict zone will be one of the most important issues at talks that Chairman-in-Office of the Organisation for Security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb will hold in Georgia on Thursday.

U.S. agreements on deploying elements of its missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic provoke an arms race and do not provide for European security, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, paid a quick visit to Afghanistan yesterday to reassure French troops following the deaths of 10 soldiers in a Taliban ambush close to the capital, Kabul, earlier this week.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to visit Warsaw on Monday to sign a deal on the deployment of elements of a U.S. missile shield in Poland.

Iran has successfully launched its first domestically built satellite, the news agency of the Islamic Republic reported on Sunday.

South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity has dismissed the government of the Georgian breakaway republic and proclaimed a one-month state of emergency, his spokesman said on Monday.

British troops accidentally killed four civilians and wounded three others with rockets during an operation against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO and British officials said Sunday.

The United States and Poland signed a deal to deploy missiles as part of a U.S. defense shield in the ex-Communist-bloc country amid a military crisis in Georgia.