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 …

August 17, 2006 — The Moscow city court has sentenced the former head of security at the bankrupt oil firm Yukos to 24 years in prison for a series of contract killings. Aleksei Pichugin is already serving a 20-year sentence on charges of organizing several murders,