The capacity of the new tank support vehicle doubles the efficiency of six armored vehicles and 40 soldiers.

An influential Mexican businessman wants to reintroduce silver coins as legal currency -- as in Mexico's 16th century heyday -- and, far-fetched as it may sound, the idea is winning support. The Senate has already passed the initiative, and the lower house is expected to vote soon on the bill, which has struck a nerve in a country where decades of financial crisis have fomented a deep distrust of paper currency.

With inflation fears growing, central bank may pull its pledge to raise rates at a "measured" pace.

The Pentagon has released the summary of a top secret Pentagon document, which sketches America's agenda for global military domination.

A drastic slump in birth rates combined with an aging population will undermine Europe's prosperity within the next 20 years unless life is made easier for parents and immigration is encouraged, according to a European Commission report.

The man who led the post-Soviet sell-off of Russian industry, creating many enemies and a few billionaires in the process, survived an assassination attempt Thursday morning when a roadside bomb detonated as his armored BMW passed a wooded area near his country home outside the capital.Anatoly Chubais, who heads Russia's state-controlled electricity monopoly, was attacked as he was headed to work in Moscow from an elite residential area where he lives -Washington Post

If unsophisticated Americans allow themselves to be misled by rosy propaganda flowering from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, the rest of the world does not.The instability of Federal Reserve Notes and the Federal Reserve System as a whole is becoming increasingly apparent to foreigners.And knowledge of this increasing instability is itself further increasing instability in the vicious circle characteristic of the break-up of all Ponzi schemes -Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr./NewsWithViews

A House ethics committee member helped raise money for a Texas political committee associated with Majority Leader Tom DeLay, presenting a possible conflict if the congressional panel investigates DeLay's role in a fund-raising controversy.Smith's (Lamar) role in the fund raising is the latest controversy involving the ethics committee and DeLay

TO BITING criticism from the Italian Opposition and the press, Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, backtracked yesterday over his announcement that Italian troops would start withdrawing from Iraq in September, claiming that this had only ever been a “hope” rather than a commitment -London Times UK

The European Union reassured China that it was pressing ahead with plans to lift a 15-year-old arms embargo on Beijing despite a storm sparked by its anti-secession law targeting Taiwan.EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the controversial law, which authorizes the use of force if Taipei moves towards independence, had caused "complicated atmospherics" around the debate over the EU arms ban -Channel News Asia SG

This is a saga that goes back to 1949, when two political paths diverged: the Nationalists, led by Jiang Kaishek, retreated offshore to Taiwan after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong's communist forces.US support kept Taiwan, unreasonably no doubt, in the security council until, in the last twist of the cold war narrative, President Nixon played his China card.Taipei was dumped; Beijing became the new best friend -Isabel Hilton/Guardian UK

Weeks after North Korea pulled out of six-nation talks and claimed it has nuclear weapons, the new US top diplomat is coming to town. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives Friday in Tokyo at a time when many Asia experts describe an unusual rise in political tensions, old animosities, and nationalism in this part of the world - despite good economic performances by China, South Korea, and Japan -Christian Science Monitor

A brain-damaged Florida woman at the heart of a prolonged and emotional end-of-life case appeared set to have her feeding tube removed on Friday after state and federal lawmakers failed to agree on how to intervene and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in

THE UN Security Council has failed to take action on Sudan as the United States and other members continued to disagree on where to prosecute criminals from the conflict in the western Darfur region.While a majority of council members want to refer suspects to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, the United States, which opposes the world tribunal, proposes that perpetrators of crimes be tried in a special tribunal based in Tanzania -New.com AU