Katyusha multiple rocket launchers (Russian: Катюша) are a type of rocket artillery originally built and fielded by the Soviet Union in the Second World War. Compared to other types of artillery, such multiple rocket launchers are able to deliver a devastating amount of explosives to an area target more quickly but with lower accuracy and requiring a longer time to reload. These vehicles are fragile compared to conventional artillery guns, but relatively inexpensive and easy to produce. Katyushas of World War II, the first self-propelled artillery mass-produced by the …

HONG KONG — In China’s first modern deployment of battle-ready warships beyond the Pacific, a naval task force set out Friday to begin escorts and patrols in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, state news media reported.
A supply ship and two destroyers departed from Sanya, on the island province of Hainan, carrying a total of about 800 crew members, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The recent Russian naval visits to Cuba and Venezuela may be linked to August’s Georgia war, said a U.S. diplomat Monday, though he said Washington was watching for the next Kremlin moves before taking a firm view.
On a first visit to Moscow that he linked to Russia’s growing interest in South and Central America, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Russia may be considering a security presence there and warned of a regional arms race.

WASHINGTON – Russian warships have been plying the waters off Venezuela and Panama in recent weeks and are now heading for Cuba, but U.S. officials are not so much wringing their hands as yawning.
Asked about a Russian warship transiting the Panama Canal earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — who saw the ship while crossing the canal last week — told The Associated Press: “I guess they’re on R&R. It’s fine.”
The Pentagon, while puzzled by the Russians’ actions, also is taking a ho-hum attitude. The U.S. military commander …

UNITED NATIONS – On the same day Somali gunmen seized two more ships, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of the Horn of Africa country.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on hand to push through the resolution, one of President George W. Bush’s last major foreign policy initiatives.

The Bush administration’s five-year push to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program collapsed Thursday when U.S.-led talks with the communist regime fell apart in Beijing – leveling another blow against President Bush’s hopes for a signature achievement on his way out of office.
The White House said it would “rethink” its approach to North Korea, which Mr. Bush included as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002 before taking a more diplomatic approach to the country in 2007.

Protest marches and rioting continued across Greece for a seventh day Friday and spread to other parts of Europe in an unprecedented spree against government driven by a young demographic of high school and college students as well as anarchists.
agence france-presse/getty images A youth attacks riot police with a steel fence outside the Greek parliament in central Athens. The death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old schoolboy, triggered the protest and has become crucible for working-class frustrations.

Representatives of more than 100 countries are in Oslo, Norway Wednesday to sign a treaty banning cluster bombs.
Norway, which has led efforts to ban cluster bombs, was the first to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, production, and sale of the weapons.
Next came Laos and Lebanon, both of which have experienced the lingering lethal effects of the munitions.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A group of Russian Islamist militants have claimed responsibility for the killing of the mayor of a city in the turbulent North Caucasus region, an Internet site with rebel links reported on Thursday.
“The execution of the enemy of Allah was carried out by the amir of Kataib al-Khoul,” a statement posted on the www.kavkazcenter.com Internet site.

The owner of a Thai fishing trawler has said the Indian navy sank it off Somalia’s coast last week after wrongly assuming it was a pirate “mother ship”.
Wicharn Sirichaiekawat said the Indian frigate had attacked the Ekawat Nava 5 while it was being hijacked by pirates.
He said one of the crew had been found alive after six days in the Gulf of Aden, but that another 14 were missing.
The Indian navy has insisted the vessel fired in self-defence at a pirate ship which had been stacked with explosives.
Almost 40 …