China has announced plans to increase its military budget this year by a massive 12.6 per cent to modernize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the largest standing army in the world.

The move is seen by many in the island republic as a "legal pre-emptive strike" that could lock Beijing into future military attack.

Former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yury Kravchenko was found dead at his country home early Friday, hours before he is to testify in a murder case of an opposition journalist.

The last three years were very kind to investors in such emerging markets as Mexico, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and others. High interest rates combined with soaring equity markets netted generous profits for these investors. But DEBKAfile’s financial analyst warns investors that a sharp sell-off may be round the corner as American interest rates continue their upward march.

Syrian President Bashar Assad will address his country's parliament on Saturday and was expected to announce a redeployment of troops to eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border, a Lebanese politician said Friday.

A study published by a research foundation in Dubai has endorsed the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee's findings that Western central and commercial banks have rigged the gold market but have much less gold than they claim to have and so are vulnerable to rising demand for gold.

At the center of neoconservative thinking has always been the elitist concept that the American population must be led by using simple messages, heroic imagery or fear.Historians trace this thinking back to the teaching of the late political philosopher Leo Strauss, a neoconservative icon.To neoconservatives, therefore, truth is not a value in its own right -Robert Parry/Consortium News

When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visits Pakistan this month to inaugurate the Gwadar deepsea port, China will take a giant leap forward in gaining a strategic foothold in the Persian Gulf region.It will advance what a recent Pentagon report describes as Beijing's "string of pearls" strategy that aims to project Chinese power overseas and protect China's energy security at home -Sudha Ramachandran/Asia Times

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death -Washington Post

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on Thursday to speed up the election of replacements if they get killed in a catastrophic event, like a Sept. 11, 2001-type attack.On a vote of 329 to 68, the House sent the doomsday measure to the Senate for approval so that it can be signed into law.The bill requires special elections within 49 days if more than 100 of the House's 435 members are killed

A federal program that is supposed to protect the United States against a smallpox attack has gone awry because of a lack of clear communication about the goals, a panel of experts said on Thursday.They said the usual scientific authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was undermined because of the vague messages of the program, and suggested a more forthcoming approach would get people back on board

As shaped by men like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and justified by some (now notoriously) inventive lawyers, the Bush Administration's approach to fighting terrorism can be summarized in a phrase: the president's inherent power.But while these lawyers focus on the Constitution's grant of power to the president as Commander in Chief, they ignore constitutional principles like the separation of powers and the concept of individual rights -Joanne Mariner/FindLaw

Canada's cattle industry suffered another blow Thursday after American senators voted to quash the U.S. department of agriculture's policy to reopen the border to Canadian beef next week.Despite the Senate's 52-46 vote, the White House said U.S. President George W. Bush would veto the measure if it ever reaches his desk.Bush favours the reopening of the border -CBC News CA

Syrian troops have been fortifying their positions east of Beirut as pressure mounts on Damascus to pull out of Lebanon without delay.After a meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh yesterday, Saudi officials said they had told President Bashar al-Assad that a full Syrian withdrawal must begin "soon", joining similar calls recently from Germany and the long-time Syrian ally Russia -Independent UK

Azerbaijan's top opposition leader on Thursday accused the government of ordering the slaying of a prominent magazine editor who had been in conflict with authorities, and he asked his supporters to take to the streets in protest.Huseinov, founder and editor of the opposition magazine Monitor, was shot to death Wednesday in the entryway of his Baku apartment building - a hallmark of contract slayings in former Soviet states

China on Thursday issued the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004 in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004 issued by the US State Department on Feb. 28. Released by the Information Office of China's StateCouncil, the Chinese report listed a multitude of cases showing that serious violations of human rights occur in the United States, local sources said -Viet Nam News VN

Iran is using reinforced materials and tunneling deep underground to store nuclear components - measures meant to make the facility resistant to "bunker busters" and other special weaponry in case of an attack, diplomats said Thursday.

The Bush administration adopted a more flexible approach in dealing with Iran, saying it will join Britain, France and Germany -- the European Union 3 -- in preventing the Islamic republic from getting nuclear weapons.

In a small but startling preliminary new study, Texas researchers found that after just three months, every one of a dozen children treated for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with the drug methylphenidate experienced a threefold increase in levels of chromosome abnormalities--occurrences associated with increased risks of cancer and other adverse health effects.