Middle East | featured news

Iran is finishing construction of a new space center that will allow it to soon launch more domestically made satellites into orbit, the country's defense minister said Saturday.

International envoy Kofi Annan said on Friday he was "frustrated and impatient" a week after a massacre in Syria of 108 people shocked the world, but Russia said his peace plan was still the best hope for Syria.

Syrian forces and pro-government militia accused of committing a massacre in Houla could face prosecution for crimes against humanity, the United Nations said on Friday and rights experts said Syrian authorities had directly ordered torture.

U.N. nuclear inspectors displayed new satellite imagery on Wednesday indicating that some small buildings had been dismantled and other possible clean-up work undertaken at an Iranian military site they want to visit.

A massive, data-slurping cyberweapon is circulating in the Middle East, according to a Russian Internet security firm. Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab ZAO said the "Flame" virus was unprecedented both in terms of its size and complexity, possessing the ability to turn infected computers into all-purpose spying machines that can even suck information out of nearby cell phones.

The second highest al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan was killed in a weekend airstrike in the country's volatile east near the border with Pakistan, NATO-led forces said on Tuesday.

Governments around the world expelled Syrian ambassadors and diplomats Tuesday, an unusual, coordinated blow to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime following a gruesome massacre that the United Nations said involved close-range shootings of scores of children and parents in their homes.

Horrific images of dozens of mutilated children's corpses in the village of Houla prompted a rare moment of unity on Sunday from the United Nations Security Council.

The brother of Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor sentenced by Pakistan to 33 years in prison for helping the CIA’s search for Osama bin Laden, urged the United States on Monday to assist in Afridi’s legal battle.

In the months after the U.S. military mission that killed Osama bin Laden, Pentagon officials met with Hollywood filmmakers and gave them special access in an effort to influence the creation of a film about the operation, newly released documents show.