Since February, abnormal seismic activity has been noted in southern Lebanon, which had suffered some 500 minor earthquakes in a three-month period, health ministry director-general Avi Yisraeli said in the letter.
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Some seismological experts point out quakes historically have rocked the region every eight decades, and the last one was just about 81 years ago. About [...]

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The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
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But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new [...]

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The Shahab-3B can be armed with a variety of different types of explosives, including conventional high explosives and submunitions as well as chemical, biological, radiological dispersion and, potentially, nuclear warheads. The missile, an “enhanced” version of the Shahab rocket, is believed to have been produced in ranges of approximately 1,300-1,500 km and 2,000 km, according [...]

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Growing competition for oil may escalate to something as hot and dangerous as nuclear proliferation
The geopolitical implications of this gathering crisis for world oil supply 2010-15 are immense. The risk of further military interventions and conflicts in the Middle East is clearly high. Total world oil reserves are estimated at 2.5-2.9 trillion barrels, of which [...]

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A “new world order” cannot be based on “an Anglo-Saxon pattern that some have tried to establish for the rest of the world,” Lavrov said. It would involve doing away with “the Cold war architecture for the security of Europe.”
He proposed a European Security Conference to bring together the United States, Russia, the European Union [...]

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Chinese expert Dr. Steven Mosher, the Chairman of the Population Research Institute and author of “Hegemon”; reports on human rights horrors in China. He was the first American scholar to spend considerable time investigating Chinese human rights, and revealed to the world the gruesome “one-child” policy. He also discusses China’s economic and military threats to [...]

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The number of rich individuals in Russia grew by 14% last year - more than twice the global average. Merrill Lynch says this was fuelled by increased market capitalisation, rising direct foreign investment, strong consumer demand and soaring energy prices.
Jean-Marie Deluermoz of Merrill Lynch said: “The conclusion of our findings this year is that in [...]

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A former head of Mossad has warned that Israel has 12 months in which to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme or risk coming under nuclear attack itself. He also hinted that Israel might have to act sooner if Barack Obama wins the US presidential election.
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Iran ready to strike at Israel’s nuclear heart
Times Online, UK - [...]

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A high-powered group of international experts is warning a “no-holds-barred” race for Arctic resources could shape up unless countries around the world move faster to reach agreements on development, safety and environmental standards.
A new report by 40 experts from six different countries spells out four scenarios for the future of the top of the world [...]

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Those are the 40-plus countries with the scientists, engineers and infrastructure for building bombs — and in at least one other case, that of South Africa, a history of having done so.
About a dozen are nuclear “rollback” states, ranging from Sweden and Switzerland, which seriously researched the weapon option in the 1950s and 1960s and [...]

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According to Gen. Michael Moseley, who was recently dismissed from his position as U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, “there is almost zero chance we will fight a nation state” in the 21st century.
While senior American flag officers acknowledge the increasing unlikelihood of great power war in the 21st century, a handful of U.S. think [...]

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The word “petrostate” typically conjures up images of Middle Eastern sheiks with fantastically wealthy lifestyles ruling politically repressive, oil-rich desert regions. Few realize that Russia actually leads the world in the production and export of natural gas and trails only Saudi Arabia in the production and export of oil. Even fewer know that Russia has [...]

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As drylands get drier and violence grows, new crises resembling Darfur will arise.
The world will experience a growing risk of conflicts over food, energy and water in coming years. The population rises each year by about 80 million people, with most of the increase in impoverished regions already facing environmental stress. Climate change, water scarcity [...]

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Revisionists say that World war II was unnecessary. They’re wrong.
Historical scholarship has nevertheless offered various sorts of revisionist interpretation of all this. Niall Ferguson, for one, has proposed looking at the two world wars as a single conflict, punctuated only by a long and ominous armistice. British conservative historians like Alan Clark and John Charmley [...]

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Beijing has promoted its 2008 Games as a nature-friendly festival of sport, but water for the expanses of greenery and sparkling waterways greeting visitors in August will be pumped from sources already battered by over-use and over-engineering, says Probe International, a Canada-based conservation group.
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Increased military action by U.S. forces in Afghanistan to target suspected terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas is putting a strain on Washington’s already tense relationship with Islamabad. A June 10 U.S. air strike (IHT) in which Pakistan’s army says eleven of its soldiers died was followed, just weeks later, by NATO forces firing into Pakistan [...]

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Officials from a German government party and the opposition demand that Germany should be freed from some 20 or so remaining U.S. nuclear warheads stored in military bases in the country.
The discussion was launched after an internal U.S. Air Force report found security and safety standards at most nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe fall [...]

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In a myriad of foreign policy speeches, both Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Lavrov have recently broached sizeable ideas on the transformation of the trans-Atlantic space, claiming that as the European civilization’s dominance in the world weakens, time has come to re-think the relationship between Russia, Europe, and the United States, and a new international architecture [...]

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The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
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Video: North Pole May Melt In Total

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It is a grim, almost unthinkable scenario: a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, smuggled into the United States, is detonated in a major U.S. city, perhaps even the Bay Area.
Top federal officials and medical experts gathered in Washington on Thursday to consider this nightmare vision. Their conclusion: Cities and states are frightfully ill-prepared for dealing with an [...]

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Exit of 110 gravity bombs ends 54-year presence. Change happened secretly over years, say scientists.
The US has removed its nuclear weapons from Britain, ending a contentious presence spanning more than half a century, a report will say today. According to the study by the Federation of American Scientists, the last 110 American nuclear weapons on [...]

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