­Authorities in Iran have postponed the long-awaited trial of three Americans detained in 2009, then taken into custody on the Iran-Iraq border and charged with espionage. Two of the US citizens have been held in prison, while the third was released a year later on $500,000 bail. The Americans deny all allegations, claiming they were hiking in the area. The espionage charges could bring them a 10-year jail sentence.

­In Poland firefighters are continuing to spray the remnants of an enormous blaze that gutted a textile warehouse just outside Warsaw. Scores of trucks and firefighters are still working at the site. Toxic smoke coming from the building forced the evacuation of people living nearby. There were no casualties, and the cause of the blaze is unknown.

Syria will not run for a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council this year, giving the bid to Kuwait. The Syrian and Kuwaiti ambassadors to the UN announced the deal Wednesday, saying Syria will submit its candidacy in 2013. Syria’s envoy to the UN, Bashar Ja’afari, said the decision had nothing to do with the current unrest in the country. However, Asian diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ja’afari told them behind closed doors that the Syrian government wanted to concentrate on its reform program.

A Syrian human rights group says security forces killed another 18 people, including an 8-year-old boy, as the crackdown on anti-government uprising widened across Syria. According to Ammar Qurabi, head of Syria’s National Organization for Human Rights, 13 people were killed by tank shelling on a village outside the city of Daraa, the hotbed of the uprising. Five others were killed in the central city of Homs. Since the unrest began more than 750 civilians have been killed.

The Palestinian Hamas movement is willing to set the borders of a future Palestinian state within the borders that existed prior to 1967, but it will never recognize Israel’s right to exist, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told the Palestinian news agency Ma’an, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Zahar said that recognition of the Israeli state would "preclude the right of the next generations to liberate the lands." Referring to a military truce with Israel, the Gaza-based leader confirmed that Hamas would honor the cessation of fighting, but underlined that the truce was “part of the resistance, not its rejection.” Zahar’s comments come 10 days before a new unity Palestinian government will be formed following a recently signed reconciliation agreement between the rival Hamas and Fatah parties.

The State Duma’s Committee on Information Policy and the Committee for Information Safety and Cyber Crimes have prepared a draft bill which suggests introducing criminal responsibility for internet spamming. This is the first time in Russian legal practice that spam is being defined as a crime. The draft bill outlaws mass mailing which contains advertising and information materials, as well as political propaganda. The bill is based on anti-spam legislation in Australia, Canada and the United States.

At least 85 people have been killed in fighting between the Southern Sudanese military and a rebel group. A southern official said the fighting with the forces of a defected army commander erupted on Sunday. Most of the casualties were on the rebels’ side. According to the UN, at least seven rebel movements are operating in the region, fighting the southern government. In January 2011, oil-rich Southern Sudan held a referendum on independence with 98.83 per cent of the population supporting the secession from the Muslim North. In less than ten weeks Southern Sudan will be declared an independent state.

Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have visited the disaster-hit Fukushima prefecture to express support to the victims and evacuees. On Wednesday, the imperial couple visited several shelters, where they knelt and spoke with the evacuees and offered words of encouragement. They then went to a coastal area devastated by the March 11 tsunami and bowed silently in the direction of the destroyed houses. The mega earthquake and ensuing tsunami triggered a nuclear emergency at Fukushima-1 power plant and became the country’s worst crisis since World War II.

Kyrgyzstan has detained a Turkish journalist for allegedly supporting a terrorist organization responsible for the deadly Istanbul blasts of 2003, news agencies said on Wednesday. Osman Zor, 43, was detained on May 2, at the request of Turkey. Turkish authorities claim that Zor, who arrived in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010, supports a terrorist group which is connected to Al-Qaeda. He has asked for political asylum in Kyrgyzstan, where he works as a journalist.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has once again justified the killing of Osama Bin Laden following criticism by human rights groups that the Al-Qaeda leader was killed without trial. He told a media conference on Wednesday that justice has been done to Bin Laden for all the crimes he committed in the past ten years. Earlier, the executive director of Human Rights Watch criticized Ban Ki-moon for calling the killing of Osama Bin Laden an act of justice, saying that the Al-Qaeda leader was denied due process. The UN chief called Bin Laden’s killing “a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”

Quality development of the economy is what Russia should be aiming for, said Prime Minister Putin at a meeting with industrialists in Togliatti on Wednesday. “In the next ten years, Russia should become one of the five leading economies in terms of GDP,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean chasing after a certain percentage; that means quality development, based on innovations and efficiency growth.” In order to achieve this objective, Russia needs to diversify its economy and bring down the level of dependence on raw materials, modernize the labor market and education system, create new working places and develop energy production, construction and infrastructure, Putin pointed out.

Libyan rebels have taken control of the airport in the country’s third-largest city of Misrata following fierce fighting with the forces of Muammar Gaddafi, Agence-France-Presse says. The rebels captured the airport on Wednesday after government troops retreated leaving behind tanks. Misrata is a rebel enclave in Gaddafi-controlled west of the country

After the arms embargo is lifted from Libya, Russia plans to continue military cooperation with the North African state, Rosoboronexport head, Anatoly Isaikin, told reporters on Wednesday. The arms embargo has cost Russia several billion dollars in lost profits, he said. However, Russia suffered nearly no direct losses after the UN Security Council banned the sales of arms to Libya. “We have lost nearly nothing, as the contracts had not come into power, and we had not begun production,” Isaikin said. “But there are lost profits – several billion dollars.”

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is due to issue a guideline for bishops on how to deal with the cases of sexual abuse of children by priests. The new document will be published on Monday. Cardinal William Levada, the head of the Vatican office, said in November the Vatican would recommend bishops establish prevention programs, improve the screening of priests and obey civil reporting requirements. The Roman Catholic Church is facing a series of ongoing investigations into sex crimes committed by priests and members of religious orders.

Unless it meets adequate resistance, the illegal drugs industry could produce a new Bin Laden, the head of Russia’s Federal Drugs Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, has said. “Osama Bin Laden, who has recently been killed, thirty years ago began his criminal career when he bought equipment to produce heroin,” Ivanov told a ministerial G8 meeting in Paris. “Back then, this factor was neglected, which resulted in the establishment of a global terrorist network, Al-Qaeda.”

Several European countries are calling in Syrian ambassadors and threatening new sanctions if the crackdown on the pro-democracy uprising continues, Germany’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said. The new package of sanctions also includes the Syrian leadership, Andreas Peschke said.  It comes after the EU imposed sanctions against some Syrian officials, prohibiting them from traveling to the bloc. The first round of sanctions did not target Syrian President Bashar Assad. The UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged the Syrian leadership to halt mass arrests of anti-government protesters and allow an international aid assessment team to enter the besieged southern city of Daraa.

The State Duma’s Committee on Information Policy and the Committee for Information Safety and Cyber Crimes have prepared a draft bill which suggests introducing criminal responsibility for internet spamming. This is the first time in Russian legal practice that spam is being defined as a crime. The draft bill outlaws mass mailing which contains advertising and information materials, as well as political propaganda. The bill is based on anti-spam legislation in Australia, Canada and the United States.

­The EU foreign relations chief has said the EU intends to open an office in the Libyan rebels’ stronghold of Benghazi, The Telegraph newspaper says. Catherine Ashton said the move will help the EU to move forward “to support civil society, to support the Interim Transitional National Council”. According to Ashton, EU support would include help for security sector reform and institution-building. "We want to help with education, with healthcare, with security on the borders," she said. She also reiterated an EU call for Muammar Gaddafi to step down.

President Medvedev thinks public initiative is a key point in fighting forest fires, he said on Wednesday. “The situation with forest fires must constantly be monitored, and we need to get the general public actively involved,” Medvedev observed. “When people know what to do they become active; if they don’t know that, the threat of fire increases,” he said. Last summer, Russia suffered devastating forest fires which killed 62 people and destroyed thousands of houses in 19 regions.

The losses of Japan’s troubled Fukushima plant operator have exceeded US$12 billion in connection with the nuclear crisis. Tokyo Electric Power Company is expected to book the losses of more than 1 trillion yen in the fiscal year which ended in March, Agence-France-Presse reports. TEPCO has accepted the conditions of support from the Japanese government over compensation the company has to pay to the people and businesses affected by the crisis. Under the conditions, the government plans to put TEPCO under state control, according to Nikkei newspaper.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced the attack on World War II veterans and Russian diplomats in Lvov on Victory Day. “Sometimes honoring the memory of those killed at war and showing respect for the veterans is replaced by false patriotism, an attempt to divide people into better and worse descendents of those who defeated fascisms,” says the statement issued by the ministry on Wednesday. On Sunday, a group of nationalists in Lvov attacked Russian diplomats and war veterans during the Victory Day celebrations, sparking outrage in Russia.

­Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni offshoot, has warned the US of new attacks in the future, saying the death of Osama Bin Laden will not end their fight. Al-Wahishi, once a close associate of Bin Laden, posted an eulogy for him on Islamist extremist websites, saying the “the matter will not be over” with his death and that “what is coming is greater and worse.”  Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is one of the most active branches of the terrorist network.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has demanded that regional governors personally look into every case of World War II veterans being denied housing, the PM’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said. WWII veterans in Russia are entitled to free apartments under a special program, for which the state allocated 170 billion rubles in the past three years. Recently, an 87-year-old veteran from Voronezh was denied an apartment, and sent a letter of complaint to the prime minister, along with all of his war medals, prompting Putin to issue his warning to regional authorities. “The PM is keeping this program under his personal control,” Peskov observed.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an “immediate, verifiable ceasefire” in Libya. The UN chief told a news conference in Geneva that he had spoken to Libya’s Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi and urged an immediate ceasefire and a halt to attacks on civilians. He said that there must also be unimpeded access for humanitarian workers trying to deliver aid to those affected by the violence.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov is concerned over the impact that violence in Lvov on Victory Day could have on the city’s reputation. “Lvov, Ukraine’s pride, is a beautiful hospitable city, and we cannot allow extremists to try and spoil its reputation,” the prime minister told a government meeting on Wednesday. Russia is outraged by Sunday’s attack by Lvov nationalists on Russian diplomats and World War II veterans, and has demanded that Ukraine finds and punishes the organizers of the attack. Ukraine has not made official comments so far.

Syrian rights activists say security forces have opened fire on anti-government protesters in the southern city of Daraa, the hotbed of the popular uprising that started in mid-March. At least three people have been killed in the latest crackdown, activists claim. Tanks were deployed in the area near the restive city to quell the unrest. There also been reports that the army is shelling residential areas in the central city of Homs. According to a rights group, more than 750 civilians have been killed throughout the uprising. Authorities block media from the areas of unrest so it is hard to confirm any data independently.

President Medvedev is holding a large press conference at the Moscow Skolkovo Business School on May 18, the presidential website informs. The subject of the press conference has not been announced. According to presidential spokesperson Natalia Timakova, the 1.5-hour event has been prompted by a large number of interview requests, and will involve more than 800 reporters. The press conference will be Dmitry Medvedev’s first media event of such scope.

The Armenian parliament has decided to triple the number of its troops taking part in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Lawmakers voted unanimously to increase the amount of soldiers from 45 to 130. The decision was taken under an agreement with NATO and is supposed to boost Armenia’s relationships with the alliance and the European Union.

Most of Greece’s public service workers have gone on general strike on Wednesday to express their discontent with the government’s severe austerity program. Train and ferry services have been suspended, while flights will be grounded for several hours. Public transport workers in the Greek capital also walked out. Unions plan to hold mass demonstrations throughout central Athens on Wednesday. Greece received a €110 billion package of rescue loans to avoid bankruptcy.  The government is planning to pass new austerity measures aimed at saving about €23 billion through 2015. According to the Wall Street Journal, Greece might need a new financial aid package of nearly €60 billion to cover its financial needs.

Activists of Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth movement, are picketing Ukraine’s embassy in Moscow and plan to continue the pickets until Kiev punishes the organizers of the provocations in Lvov on Victory Day, the movement said in a statement on Wednesday. On May 9, a group of nationalists in Lvov, western Ukraine, aggressively prevented World War II veterans and Russian diplomats from laying a wreath at the local war heroes’ memorial, sparking nationwide outrage in Russia. “We think that Ukraine’s authorities closing their eyes on the nationalists’ actions is Ukraine’s first step towards state fascism,” the activists said.

Thousands of Christians have blocked two main coastal roads in Egypt’s second-largest city of Alexandria on Wednesday to demand trial for the Muslims who have sparked religious violence over the past months. It follows violence in the capital Cairo at the weekend, which left 12 people dead and saw some 190 arrested. The unrest came after a group of conservative Muslims torched two churches, following reports that a Christian woman who had converted to Islam was being held there.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has voted to allow openly gay people to be ordained as ministers, elders and deacons. The measure ratified on Tuesday comes as result of more than a three-decade-long debate on the issue. The church voted 205 to 56 to support gay ordination. The New York Times quoted Cynthia Bolbach, moderator of the Church’s General Assembly as saying, “Everyone was civil. There was no applause, no cheering. It was just reflective of the fact that we are moving forward one other step.” The Presbyterian Church (USA) becomes the fourth mainline Protestant Church to allow gay ordination after Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran Churches and the United Church of Christ.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has put on hold all construction projects within the city center, and ordered a revision of all construction permits issued previously. “We have decided to freeze the earlier issued permits for construction in the historical center of the city, and review these permits. This should take no longer than one month, “Sobyanin told a Moscow government meeting on Wednesday. The current procedure for obtaining construction permits is non-transparent, and should be revised, Sobyanin added. Architecture experts and enthusiasts have long been alarmed over the brutal demolition of historic buildings in downtown Moscow.

Lithuania is going to publish old KGB files online as evidence of Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius has said. “I want the publishing of the KGB archives to help restore historical justice, and prevent speculation which claims there was no Soviet occupation of the Baltics,” Kubilius said. The archives, which will be made public on a special website, will allow researchers and all those interested to get acquainted with the activities and methods of the Soviet power structures, the official said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received a gold medal from the Sydney Peace Foundation on Tuesday. The Australian human rights award, announced in February, has been given to Assange for “an unusual act ... that challenges conformity to political or cultural orthodoxy.” World-famous professor Noam Chomsky praised the organization for awarding Assange and paid tribute to him, saying, “I thank you profusely for the way in which you have exercised your responsibilities as a citizen of free societies, and thus enabling citizens to know what their government is doing”. Assange hit the headlines across the world after he published hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents on his whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is now in the UK fighting extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations. Previously, there have been only three recipients of the award in the foundation's 14-year history, Nelson Mandela, the 14th Dalai Lama and a Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda.

Greek riot police have arrested 25 people in Athens, after far-right activists held a violent anti-immigrant protest. The demonstration, which involved several hundred youths, occurred after a 44-year-old Greek man was reportedly robbed and stabbed to death by a group of immigrants on Tuesday. Police intervened after protesters chased foreigners through the streets and vandalized local buildings.

­The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has released footage from inside one of the reactors containing highly-radioactive spent-fuel. The video appears to show the fuel rods, believed to be largely undamaged, lying under debris. The country has been trying to minimize radiation leaks since the facility was struck by March's massive earthquake and tsunami.

­Gulf Arab leaders welcomed Amman and Rabat’s requests to join the council, as was announced at a press conference on Tuesday in the wake of a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Riyadh. Jordanian media reported that Jordan’s King Abdullah II conducted "intensive efforts" with the GCC. The Gulf Cooperation Council, created in 1981 to coordinate political and economic policies, includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The six countries are seen as the most influential members of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Last month the GCC sent troops into Bahrain, which is facing a rebellion against its monarchy.

­Thousands of Rome residents refused to go to work on Wednesday, out of fear that a massive earthquake predicted by self-taught seismologist Raffaele Bendandi – who died 30 years ago – would indeed transpire. Bendandi, the so-called "earthquake prophet," is said to have forecast a devastating quake to demolish the capital on May 11. The prophet’s list of successful predictions includes the Friuli quake in 1976, which claimed almost 1,000 lives. But the head of Bendandi's foundation refutes the claim that Bendandi ever made such a prophecy about Rome.
"I can state with absolute certainty that in Raffaele Bendandi's papers, there is no prediction of an earthquake in Rome on May 11, 2011," he was quoted as saying by the Guardian newspaper. "The date is not there. The place is not there."

­A US federal court has sanctioned the US Copyright Group to subpoena internet service providers in order to find out the identity of all US citizens who illegally downloaded Stalone’s “Expendables” via BitTorrent. This comes amid the largest legal suit against BitTorrent users for copyright infringement, and prosecutors are expected to determine the names of at least 23,000 file sharers. Subpoenas are expected to go out this week. In total, over 140,000 BitTorrent users in the US are being targeted in dozens of lawsuits across the country.

­Vilnus will start publishing scans of KGB genuine documents which were in force in the Baltic countries during Soviet times. According to the Interfax news agency, Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said he hoped that the publication of the archives belonging to what he called the “criminal organization” – the KGB, the Soviet Committee for State Security – would set the historical record straight and put an end to suggestions that the Soviet Union did not occupy the Baltic countries. He added that the publication, which starts on Wednesday, will allow researchers and anyone else interested to learn about “the activities and methods of Soviet repressive structures.” Lithuanian media has reported that free access will not be granted to all the documents. Specifically, data on former KGB officers on secret missions in Lithuania will not be disclosed.

­Syrian forces released on Tuesday 300 people who had been arrested in the coastal city of Baniyas the previous week, Reuters reported, quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The arrests came as government forces dispatched tanks to storm residential areas. Water, telecommunications and electricity have been restored, but tanks remain deployed in major streets, the Observatory stated. An estimated 200 people, including pro-democracy protest leaders, remain in jail, the group said.

­The Italian Communications Authority, Agcom, fined the news department of the state national channel Rai 100,000 euros for mentioning Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi too frequently and for ignoring the opposition. The decision was taken after a weeks-long analysis of the channel’s broadcasts on the approaching regional elections, which will take place the Apennines region on May 15 and 16.  Berlusconi tops the Milan list of his People of Freedom party. Agcom also demanded other channels limit the frequency of references to Berlusconi, and fairly split the time among the representatives of the ruling party and the coalition.

­Switzerland has started negotiating with Egypt’s Ministry of Justice regarding the transfer of frozen assets belonging to Egypt’s ousted president, Hosni Mubarak, and his allies. “The people of Egypt thank the Swiss government for their decision to freeze the assets of former president Mubarak and other former leaders,” said Assem al-Gohary, Egypt's deputy minister of justice. Swiss representatives declared that if the assets proved to be acquired by criminal means, Switzerland will not hold those assets on its territory. During Egypt’s uprising this past winter, Switzerland froze the assets of 12 Egyptian officials and key figures, including Mubarak’s, the total value of which is estimated at $320 million.