TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran has announced plans to hold celebrations around the country to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of its oil industry.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

KABUL (AFP) – Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura met President Hamid Karzai during a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday in which he urged better relations with Pakistan.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week launched a $1.2 billion project to upgrade Sri Lanka’s sole refinery at Sapugaskande, outside Colombo, the island nation’s capital.

TEHRAN (FNA)- An Iranian diplomat said that the mega project of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline would soon be undertaken.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran and India’s Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) signed an MOU on 1st May to set up a Centre for Iranology in the Academy of Third World Studies at JMI campus in the capital.

TEHRAN (FNA)- A delegation of Iranian Muslim leaders this week visited the Vatican for a three-day seminar on “Faith and Reason in Christianity and Islam” and a meeting with Pope Benedict XIV.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkish warplanes launched intensive bombing raids on Kurdish targets in northern Iraq overnight but there were no reports of any casualties, a Kurdish spokesman said on Friday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Friday that the consignment of heat insulation material, destined to Bushehr nuclear power plant from Russia, has entered Iranian soil after being stranded by Azerbaijan recently.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country and Yemen have entered a new chapter in relations between the two countries.