Free Republic

<p>Empires can rise and fall quickly. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires abruptly collapsed amid military defeat, rising nationalism, and revolution.</p> <p>Yet on the eve of World War II four new empires suddenly grew out the wreckage of old Europe and Asia. A weak Italy under Fascist Benito Mussolini in just a few years grabbed much of East and North Africa, as well as the Dalmatian coast. Hitler’s so-called “Third Empire” carved off Austria and strips of Eastern Europe — and planned to go to war for more. The Soviet Union absorbed the Baltic states and southern Finland. Japan declared first Manchuria, and then Southeast Asia, part of its new “Co-Prosperity Sphere.”</p>

IRAN'S controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is flying to Shanghai tomorrow to take part in a summit that will seal China's plans to lead an Asian rival to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation - whose meeting has forced the shutdown of much of the city this week - is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and is preparing to expand its membership well beyond the present China, Russia and four strategic central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Hui refused at a briefing yesterday to disclose the countries that wished to become observers...

Iran said yesterday that it had struck an agreement with Russia on its nuclear programme but Moscow insisted the fundamental dispute over Tehran's nuclear plans had yet to be resolved. Western diplomats also argued that any Russian-Iranian deal was probably a technical one and had still failed to resolve the basic issue of whether Iran would desist from all controversial nuclear activities, as international agencies demand. The Tehran announcement came just days before the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, is due to produce a comprehensive report on Iran's nuclear activities - a document that will be...

TEHRAN, Iran - To shouts of "Death to America," Iran's parliament unanimously approved the outline of a bill Sunday that would require the government to resume uranium enrichment, legislation likely to deepen an international dispute over Iran's nuclear activities. Still, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian told The Associated Press there was a 50 percent chance of a nuclear compromise with European nations. [...] Some lawmakers broke out with shouts of "Death to America!" after the conservative-dominated parliament after lawmakers voted to advance the nation's nuclear program, an issue of national pride that provides a rare point of agreement between...