TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Industries and Mining Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian said his country’s crude steel production capacity will reach 15.5 million tons by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (ending March 20, 2009).

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran has no plans to sell any more of the oil it holds in floating storage off its southern coast, a top Iranian oil official said in remarks published on Tuesday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Thirty percent of the increase in the price of oil is because of the decrease in the value of the dollar, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said.

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 …