ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

One person was killed and more than 80 wounded in clashes at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in central Cairo on Sunday after a funeral service for four Egyptian Christians killed in sectarian violence with Muslims, state media said. Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hard line Islamists repressed under his autocratic rule. The state news agency MENA said 84 people had been injured in several hours of fighting after a ceremony at the cathedral, headquarters of the Coptic church, which was showered with stones, petrol bombs and bird-shot. The man killed on Sunday was identified by MENA as 30-year-old Mahrous Hana Tadros, a Christian name. Police fired tear gas to try to disperse the crowds but clashes continued late into the evening. MENA said 11 policemen were among the wounded. Violence also broke out near a Coptic church in El Khusus north of Cairo, where four Christians and o

The Kaesong Industrial Complex, about six miles inside North Korean territory, is the last major symbol of cooperation between Seoul and Pyongyang, and a key source of foreign currency for the latter. North Korea took the unprecedented step of closing the Kaesong joint industrial complex on Monday as the crisis on the peninsula escalated further amid claims that a fourth nuclear test was imminent. Kim Yang Gon, a senior North Korean official, blamed "military warmongers" for the decision to "temporarily suspend the operations in the zone and examine the issue of whether [to] allow its existence or close it". North Korea's enemies had transformed the complex into a "hotbed of confrontation", claimed Mr Kim, who is the secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. "How the situation will develop in the days ahead will entirely depend on the attitude of the South Korean authorities." Pyongyang's unprecedent

By Alex Lantier April 08, 2013  Over the weekend, US officials continued to threaten North Korea with war, demanding that China cut off its support to the regime in Pyongyang. This comes after weeks of US threats aimed at Pyongyang’s nuclear program, during which Washington flew nuclear-capable bombers to Korea to demonstrate its capacity to wage nuclear war against the North. Last week, US officials revealed that these moves were part of a laid-out “playbook” of US escalations—aimed to terrorize North Korea’s government and population. General Walter Sharp, the former US military commander in South Korea, told America’s National Public Radio (NPR): “there’s been a lot of effort over the past two and a half years now to build this counter-provocation plan. Because that’s a hard balance of a strong response: don’t escalate, but be prepared to go to war.” Sharp said that US and South Korean forces would rapidly respond to any firing along the border by the North Korean and prepare for an

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea appears to be preparing for a fourth nuclear test, South Korea said on Monday, following intelligence reports of heightened activity at its main atomic test site. "There are such signs," Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-Jae told a parliamentary committee hearing when lawmakers asked him to confirm the reports. It was the North's third nuclear test in February and subsequent UN sanctions that kickstarted the cycle of ongoing escalating military tensions that the international community is desperate to break. The JoongAng Ilbo daily said South Korean intelligence had detected unusually busy personnel and vehicle movements at the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site since last week. "We are trying to figure out whether it is a genuine preparation for a nuclear test or just a ploy to heap more pressure on us and the US," it cited an unnamed South Korean government official as saying. Intelligence reports also suggest Pyongyang has readied

BEIRUT (AFP) - Nine children were among at least 15 people killed in an air strike on a mainly Kurdish district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday, a watchdog said. "The number of people killed in an air strike on the western edges of Sheikh Maksoud has risen to 15 ... Among them were nine children aged under 18 years and three women," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It was not immediately clear if any of the casualties were fighters from the Democratic Union Party (PYD), Syria's branch of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Britain-based Observatory said. After the strike, Kurdish fighters killed five soldiers in an attack on an army checkpoint, the watchdog added. Up until now, Syria's Kurds have been split over their country's anti-regime uprising, with most trying to maintain neutrality. Amateur video distributed by the Syrian Revolution General Commission, an activist network, showed burnt bodies lying in

Azerbaijan, Baku, Apr.7/ Trend G.Mehdi/ Iran will unveil five new domestically produced radioisotopes by the end of the current calendar month of Farvardin (April 20), ISNA quoted Iranian Vice President for Scientific and Technological Affairs Nasrin Soltankhah as saying. Soltankhah also said that Iran would unveil 28 science-based products in the near future. In October 2012, ISNA quoted Iran's National Security Committee spokesman Hossein Naqavi Hosseini as saying that Iran will become self-sufficient in producing radioisotope drugs in the current calendar year which began on March 21. Once the first phase of the Arak nuclear power plant comes on stream, the country will be self-sufficient in producing radioisotope drugs for over one million patients suffering from various types of cancers and brain tumors, he noted. In a landmark pharmaceutical progress, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) announced in January that Iranian scientists have managed to synthesise two new

Test launch of a Minuteman 3 intercontinental missile next week delayed until next month to avoid exacerbating crisis An unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile leaves a contrail through the sky in California. The test has been rescheduled for next month. Photograph: Greg Vojtko/AP The US has attempted to ease rising tensions with North Korea by postponing a missile test scheduled to take place in California next week, lest this be interpreted by Pyongyang as deliberately provocative. The US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, decided to delay the long-planned test launch of a Minuteman 3 intercontinental missile from an airbase until next month over concerns it could exacerbate the crisis, officials briefed reporters anonymously. "This is the logical, prudent and responsible course of action to take," a senior defence official was quoted as saying by Reuters. The test had no connection to North Korea and could be rescheduled for next month, the official said, m

Former soldier tells trial that Otto Pérez Molina ordered soldiers to burn and pillage during 1980s war By Associated Press April 06, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - A former soldier has implicated the Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina , in civil war atrocities during the trial of the former US-backed military strongman Efraín Ríos Montt, proceedings that have heard witnesses recount a litany of horrors. Hugo Reyes, a soldier who was a mechanic in an engineering brigade in the area where atrocities were carried out, told the court that Pérez Molina, then an army major, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage during Guatemala 's dirty war with leftist guerrillas in the 1980s. "The soldiers, on orders from Major 'Tito Arias', better known as Otto Pérez Molina … co-ordinated the burning and looting, in order to later execute people," Reyes told the court by video link. Pérez Molina, who retired as a general, was elected president for the