MIDDLE EAST - With sanctions against Iran gradually showing their ineffectiveness, Washington is escalating the situation in the Persian Gulf, as if encouraging Tehran to attack first, a US politics professor told RT. Amid pressure mounting on Tehran, a major Indian company, United India Insurance Co, has agreed to provide insurance for tankers carrying oil from Iran. Insurances are vital for sea transportation. Without insurance, tankers are unable to deliver oil from one destination to another. “The more warships the US moves [to the region], the more threatened Iran is going to feel,” explains Patricia DeGennaro, professor of politics at New York University.

POLAND - One person died and 10 were wounded as heavy storms swept through the north-western part of Poland on Saturday evening. Two tornadoes hit counties in Kujawy-Pomorze and Wielkopolska provinces. More than 100 houses were destroyed and about 400 hectares of trees were felled in Bory Tucholskie national park. Power lines were also brought down leaving homes cut off and train services disrupted.

NIGERIA - At least 100 people were killed when a petrol tanker exploded after it crashed on a rural road in Nigeria. Hundreds of people ran to try to collect petrol spilling out of the overturned lorry but within minutes a spark or a dropped cigarette butt caused a sudden blast which trapped many people in an horrific fire. Worst affected were motorbike taxi drivers who were trying to scoop the spilt fuel into their own tanks, which then also exploded when the fire started.

LONDON, UK - For the first time since WWII, London's green space is transformed by anti-aircraft guns for Olympic ring of steel. It is a sight which many older generations thought they would never see in this country again. Soldiers in residential tower blocks and green open spaces were yesterday pictured installing surface-to-air missiles at six sites across the capital, a show of strength not seen in this country since the Second World War. With two weeks to go before the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games, it marks a dramatic development in the biggest peacetime security operation the country has ever seen.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Israeli and American officials met in Jerusalem on Thursday for one of their semi-annual “strategic dialogue” meetings, which concluded with a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry noting that Iran’s nuclear program was high on the agenda. Behind the bland public comments, however, one well-placed Israeli source spoke of friction in US-Israeli ties over the struggle to thwart Iran, with the US urging Israel to allow more time for sanctions to bite, and Israel expressing concern that its window of opportunity for military action is starting to close.

USA - Has the radiation from Fukushima finally made its way across the Pacific Ocean through the jetstream? A breaking eyewitness report from an ex-military man in Los Angeles is claiming that radiation levels on the West Coast in general are spiking because of the Japanese Nuclear disaster in March of 2011.

RUSSIA - A state of emergency has been declared in several eastern regions, where hundreds of wildfires are now raging. The wildfires cover an 8,331-hectare area in total, according to the Siberian Federal District Forestry Department. Around 1,600 people and 42 planes are now fighting the fires. According to Greenpeace, the situation is worse now than at the same time in the summer of 2010, when Russia was devastated by forest fires.

TURKEY - A 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook southwest Turkey on Sunday and at least six people were injured after jumping from their balconies or windows in panic, local media reported. However, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted the local media as saying that around 60 people went to hospitals for treatment of minor injuries, heart complaints and shock. Earthquakes are a daily occurrence in Turkey, which is crisscrossed by geological fault lines. In October last year, more than 600 people died in the eastern province of Van after a quake of 7.2 magnitude.

JAPAN - The typhoon made landfall on the tip of the Pacific peninsula of Kii, south of Osaka, shortly after 5:00 pm, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It is now roaring northeast through central Japan with a speed of 126 km per hour near the center, and gusts of up to 180 km per hour. After that, the typhoon is expected to blow out into the Pacific again Wednesday morning. Locals have been warned there are risks of mudslides, flash-flooding and high waves.

JAPAN - The death toll from landslides and floods in Japan has risen to at least 20. Around 260,000 people living in the area have been ordered to evacuate, and 140,000 more were advised to leave their homes on the South Western island of Kyushu. Most of those killed lost their lives in landslides in and around the town of Aso, situated at the foot of a volcano in Kumamoto prefecture, one of the island’s four prefectures affected by the disaster. Many of the casualties were elderly people unable to leave their houses as water levels rose rapidly.

CHINA - State television CCTV said rainstorms in the central Hubei province in China battered 17 cities and counties, with water levels in Hong'an county reaching 1.4 feet. In the south-western city of Chongqing, storms on Thursday caused flooding on the roads up to 1.3 feet, causing serious traffic congestion. The downpour caused water levels in the Yangtze and Jialing rivers that run through Chongqing to rise by 3.3 feet.

LONDON, UK - An inquiry into the rate-rigging scandal has been branded a “total joke” after two MPs who proved the toughest interrogators of banking chiefs were barred from the panel. To the surprise of many in Westminster, two members of the Committee, Labour's John Mann and Andrea Leadsom, a backbench Tory MP, who have both been praised for their incisive questioning, have been excluded from the panel. Mr Mann took to Twitter to describe the membership of the commission as a “total joke” and a “whitewash”.

UK - A man has set himself on fire outside a Birmingham jobcentre after what reports suggest was an argument over benefit payments. The 48-year-old unnamed man is understood to have doused himself in flammable liquid and tied himself to railings after a dispute inside the Jobcentre Plus in the Selly Oak area on Thursday. An unnamed witness who spoke to the Birmingham Mail said: "He would have to have been very desperate to have done something like that. It's shocking that somebody could have been driven to those depths."

UK - What would it take to break the impasse on GM crops? That's a problem that has been exercising minds at the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, which is urging the government to adopt a strategic plan for agriculture that includes a central role for biotechnology. Ministers will discuss their proposals, outlined in a new report Going For Growth, at a meeting with industry representatives, scientists and farmers later today.

UK - A team of British plant scientists has won a $10 million (£6.4 million) grant from the Gates Foundation to develop GM cereal crops. It is one of the largest single investments into GM in the UK and will be used to cultivate corn, wheat and rice that need little or no fertiliser. It comes at a time when bio-tech researchers are trying to allay public fears over genetic modification.

The work at the John Innes Centre in Norwich is hoped to benefit African farmers who cannot afford fertiliser.