TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkey will increase its imports of gas from Iran to compensate for a reduction in supplies from Azerbaijan resulting from the conflict in Georgia, a senior source from the Turkish pipeline company Botas said on Tuesday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on Tuesday that the Iranian armed forces are ready to counter any surprise attack by the enemies with a crushing response.

TEHRAN (FNA)- The crisis over electricity failure grows as summer temperatures climb and a drought plagues Iraq, and it is where Iran enters to help Iraqis where the US has failed.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers agreed in principle on Wednesday to send monitors to supervise a French-brokered ceasefire between Russia and Georgia in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinians gave their national poet Mahmoud Darwish what amounted to a state funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday, mourning a man who articulated their sense of loss, exile and defiance.

EDINBURGH (Reuters) – The Palestine National Theatre is putting on a play based on a poem by Mahmoud Darwish at the Edinburgh International Festival dedicated to the acclaimed Palestinian poet who died last Saturday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will spend at least $400 million in 2008 on restoring South Ossetia’s battered capital Tskhinvali, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Wednesday. Tskhinvali, with a population of about 35,000, bore the brunt of five days of fighting that began last Friday when Georgia sought to retake …

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) – A bomb killed at least 18 people, including nine soldiers, in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Wednesday, security sources said. The bomb, which also wounded at least 45 people, was the deadliest attack on the army since its battle with al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants …

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romania’s parliament rejected a request from prosecutors to investigate corruption allegations against former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase on Wednesday, in a case seen as a test of the country’s justice system reforms.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, has ordered the military to cease its operations in Georgia and the breakaway regions of South Osetia and Abkhazia, according to the Kremlin.