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LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - To reach its strict climate targets and fulfill Chancellor Angela Merkel's nuclear exit plans, Germany needs to avoid coal and build a stack of gas power plants to secure clean energy supplies beyond 2020. Yet the challenge facing Merkel's new environment minister Peter Altmaier, his predecessor fired this week following a disastrous state election defeat, is finding a way to make gas an attractive option while coal remains the more profitable way to produce electricity for Europe's biggest economy. ...

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western intervention ahead of a G8 summit at which Syria and Iran will be discussed. "Hasty military operations in foreign states usually bring radicals to power," Medvedev, president for four years until Vladimir Putin's inauguration on May 7, told a conference in St. Petersburg in remarks posted on the government's website. ...

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Ministry threatened on Thursday to take legal action against Google for dropping the name Persian Gulf from its Google Maps and leaving the waterway between Iran and Arab states nameless, state television reported. "One of the seditionist acts taken as part of the soft war against the Iranian nation has been Google's shameless act to drop the name 'Persian Gulf' which is ... against historical documents," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying. ...

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TEHRAN, Iran - Iran says it will sue Google over dropping the name of the Persian Gulf on Google Maps.

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JERUSALEM - The U.S. has plans in place to attack Iran if necessary to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, Washington's envoy to Israel said, days ahead of a crucial round of nuclear talks with Tehran.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron will tell leaders of some of the world's biggest economies on Friday that they must work together to stop the economic crisis afflicting the euro zone from spreading worldwide. Cameron's message to other Group of Eight leaders, who begin a summit on Friday at the U.S. presidential retreat of Camp David, Maryland, would be that "we need to work together to protect ourselves against global contagion from the economic crisis and to promote global trade," an aide to Cameron said. ...

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.N. panel of experts that monitors compliance with sanctions on North Korea is investigating reports of possible weapons-related deals between Pyongyang and Syria and Myanmar, the panel said in a confidential report seen by Reuters on Thursday. "The DPRK (North Korea) continues actively to defy the measures in the (U.N. sanctions) resolutions," the panel said in the report, which it submitted to the U.N. Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee earlier this week. ...

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Iran rejects Western pressures over its nuclear activities and will never give up its rights, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator said Thursday ahead of crunch talks with world powers in Baghdad next week.

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Gunmen dressed in Afghan police uniforms and wearing suicide vests stormed a government compound on Thursday, killing seven people and wounding 12 others in the southwest, police said.

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Bahrain on Thursday warned Iran to stop interfering in its internal affairs while affirming its support for a union between the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

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