Middle East News

President Barack Obama is lifting his self-imposed ban on transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen, where a leadership upheaval has improved the country's security but not eliminated the terrorist organization trying to recruit jihadists.

Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has blasted the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers, declaring it impossible for them to do a worse job running the country, an Iranian pro-reform website reported Wednesday.

One of the more buzzed-about films at the Cannes Film Festival, "Omar," is set in the West Bank, and the Palestinian conflict is a key part of the plot.

Turkish lawmakers on Thursday began debating a bill that bans all alcohol advertising and tightens restrictions on sales of such beverages - a proposal the government insists is aimed at protecting the young from the ills of spirits but which secularists say is an example of the Islamic-based ruling party's encroachment on personal freedoms.

Gunmen killed at least seven soldiers in central Iraq on Thursday, officials said, in the latest episode of violence to hit the country in a particularly bloody month.

Photos taken from video made available by London's The Sun newspaper appear to show one of the assailants speaking to the camera after a brutal attack in broad daylight May 22, 2013 near a military barracks in London.

Two people died in a head-on collision on the roads on Thursday morning in the area of Hatzor in central Israel.

The FBI has arrested a suspect in a case involving the discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin and says investigators are working "around the clock" to address any remaining risks.

Metals swap deals with Iran by Switzerland-based commodities giants Glencore Xstrata and Trafigura could have been a way of skirting international sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program, according to a confidential U.N. Panel of Experts report seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

TIBERIAS, Israel - The massive circular structure appears to be an archaeologists dream: a recently discovered antiquity that could reveal secrets of ancient life in the Middle East and is just waiting to be excavated.

Customers and employees at a Bank Hapoalim branch in Beer Sheba, Israel were sure a terrorist attack was underway when they heard shots ring out Monday afternoon.

The European Union is reassessing whether to declare the Lebanese party Hezbollah's military wing a terrorist organization, a move it has long shied from despite pressure from the U.S., officials said Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks during a joint news conference with his Jordanian counterpart, Nasser Judeh, right, in Amman Wednesday, May 22, 2013.

The Israeli military has jailed a young man for six months for refusing to serve because of his opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, focusing attention on the longstanding conflict between the country's universal military service and divided political beliefs.

Syria's main opposition alliance on Wednesday urged fighters to come from around the country to reinforce a rebel-held town under attack by President Bashar Assad's troops and their allies from the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

A car bomb exploded as Sunni worshippers were leaving a mosque after evening prayers Tuesday in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks that killed at least 20 people nationwide in a week of the most sustained sectarian violence in the country since U.S. troops withdrew more than a year ago.

The latest attacks come amid a recent uptick in Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq that has killed at least 266 people in the past three weeks, according to a CNN tally.

U.N. officials said Tuesday that the number of Syrian refugees arriving in Jordan has suddenly fallen from an average of 2,500 a day to fewer than 20, and they are trying to quickly figure out why.

The novel SARS-like virus that's been infecting people who have been in the Middle East or those who have been in contact with recent travelers to the region, has killed a 66-year-old Tunisian man following a visit to Saudi Arabia.

Iran's state TV says overseers of next month's presidential election have rejected a top aide of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a former president who revived hopes of reformers.