TEHRAN (FNA)- Cyprus has not asked for Iran’s mediation towards Turkey regarding efforts to reach a solution to the Cyprus issue, a Cypriot Foreign Ministry’s source said.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Tehran’s nuclear issue is not on the UN agenda, Russia said rejecting claims by Britain and US that 5+1 powers hold the same view for intensifying sanctions on Iran.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Wednesday emphasized Iran takes pride in its scientists, inventors and world champions.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations accused Washington of trying to use Tehran as a scapegoat for its own blunders in Iraq.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Germany’s allies are dismayed that the German government has granted a German firm permission to supply three natural gas plants to Iran at the same time they’re trying to pressure Iran into suspending its nuclear program, US and European officials said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Roadside bomb incidents involving U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan hit their highest level in at least four years between April and June, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s parliament failed to reach agreement on an elections law on Wednesday, likely delaying into 2009 local polls that the United States and United Nations have pushed hard to be held as soon as possible.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia buried Soviet-era dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn at a 16th-century monastery on Wednesday after a religious ceremony attended by President Dmitry Medvedev which bore all the hallmarks of a state funeral.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia has set no deadline for Iran to respond to an offer from six world powers aimed at resolving Tehran’s nuclear standoff with the West, Russia’s U.N. ambassador said on Wednesday.