The Middle East has acquired immense strategic value as one of the determining fulcrums in the global balance of power due to its being the world’s largest known storehouse of low-cost energy supplies.

Iran has shut down several traditional tea houses popular with Iranians and foreign tourists alike in historic cities because they offer water pipes, a newspaper said on Sunday.

Supreme State Attorney Renata Vesecka wants to ask Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to assign the civilian counter-intelligence service (BIS) to check the information leak from