Middle East | featured news

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, making what is likely to be her last trip to Jerusalem as America’s top diplomat Monday, hailed a “moment of great change” in the Middle East — after her motorcade was pelted with fruit and shoes in Egypt.

The interior minister says the initial investigation into a bombing at a wedding hall suggests the Taliban and terrorists were responsible.

The United Arab Emirates opens and begins operating a key overland pipeline which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, controlled by Iran. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait at the mouth of the Gulf, a vital oil-trade route.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday it now considers the conflict in Syria to be a full-blown civil war, meaning international humanitarian law applies throughout the country.

Iran's Oil Minister says his office has drawn up plans to make newly tightened sanctions against the Islamic Republic ineffective.

The United States has branded Syria's leaders murderers after an attack on a village by President Bashar al-Assad's troops left dozens dead, but there was no break in the deadlock among world powers over how to bring about an end to the bloodshed.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a wedding reception in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 22 people including a prominent politician, and wounding 40 others, police said.

Syria's ambassador to Iraq defected on Wednesday in protest over President Bashar al-Assad's violent suppression of a 16-month uprising as the U.N. Security Council remained deadlocked over the next steps in the crisis.

Moving the mountain of U.S. military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year's withdrawal from Iraq, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Tuesday.

On Monday, Russia said it would not sign new weapons contracts with Syria until the situation there calms down.