KHARDALI (Reuters) — Lebanese troops deployed in south Lebanon on Thursday, linking up with UN peacekeepers to take control of Hizbollah strongholds as Israeli forces pulled back after their 34-day war with the fighters.

  Iran’s state television today said the military would launch a series of large-scale exercises on August 19. State television quoted army deputy commander General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani as saying that the upcoming maneuvers “aim at introducing Iran’s new defensive

Rafiq Qori Kamoluddin, the prominent ethnic Uzbek religious leader who was killed during a security raid in southern Kyrgyzstan on August 6, is not the first imam to have been targeted by law-enforcement agencies in the region. Several other Uzbek imams have been persecuted before. But he is the first …