Middle East | featured news

A Pakistani couple accused of killing their 15-year-old daughter by pouring acid on her carried out the attack because she sullied the family's honor by looking at a boy, the couple said in an interview broadcast Monday by the BBC....

An Islamist suicide car bomber killed at least 50 Syrian security men on Monday, an opposition group said, in one of the bloodiest single attacks on President Bashar Assad's forces. It came a day after Syrian government forces killed 179 people, said the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group.

South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan last year, objected to a United Nations report raising allegations of atrocities by South Sudan’s army.

Syrian rebels capture a key oilfield in eastern Deir Ezzor province, activists say, the first time such a facility has been taken.

A senior intelligence official has issued a new timeline for the events surrounding the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, indicating a series of tragic miscalculations that left CIA officers exposed at an annex near the consulate -- but no evidence of interference from Washington or of the CIA witholding aid from the State Department, as Republican critics have alleged.

Lifting a nearly 25-year veil of secrecy, Israel has admitted that it killed the deputy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a 1988 raid in Tunis.

Even as Western sanctions ravage their economy, some Iranians are reaping a cash harvest from an unexpected source: a booming illicit drug industry that law enforcement officials say is producing record quantities of a powerful synthetic drug.

China on Thursday called for a phased-in cease-fire and negotiations on a gradual political transition to end the ongoing bloodshed in Syria. A four-point proposal issued by the Foreign Ministry stopped short of calling for the ouster of President Bashar Assad and omitted mention of any measures to compel compliance. Alongside Russia, China has steadfastly blocked any outside intervention that could force Assad from power, much to the consternation of the U.S. and other countries seeking a swift end to the 19-month-old conflict, which has killed more than 35,000 people.

Afghanistan will hold its next presidential election on April 5, 2014, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, had denied speculation that security problems and the exit of foreign troops that year would delay the poll.

Iran has drawn back from its ambitions to build a nuclear weapon, Israel's defense minister was quoted as saying on Tuesday, while warning that his country may still have to decide next year whether to launch a military strike against it.