Middle East | featured news

As the death toll grows in Syria, so do the desperate pleas for help. "What is the world waiting for?" asked one Syrian woman this week while holed up in a makeshift bomb shelter with her sick son. "For us to die of hunger and fear?"

The Obama administration is “ready to get back to business” with Pakistan after a three-month freeze in relations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told her Pakistani counterpart here Thursday.

The United States, Europe and Arab nations are preparing to demand that Syrian President Bashar Assad agree within days to a ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid into areas hardest hit by his regime's brutal crackdown on opponents.

Japan is in final talks with Washington on an agreement on cuts in Iranian crude oil imports that could amount to more than 20 percent a year, the Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday, as Tokyo seeks to win waivers from U.S. sanctions.

Iran warned Tuesday it would strike against an "enemy" threatening it if needed to protect its national interests -- even if the enemy didn't attack first. Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, a deputy head of Iran's armed forces, said his country "will no more wait to see enemy action against us," according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

China, India and Japan are planning cuts of at least 10 percent in Iranian crude imports as tightening U.S. sanctions make it difficult for the top Asian buyers to keep doing business with the OPEC producer.

Security forces were out in force in Damascus on Sunday as rebels plan a repeat of protests that have threatened President Assad's grip on the capital.

Iran has stopped selling crude to British and French companies, the oil ministry said on Sunday.

Syrian security forces fired live rounds and tear gas at thousands of people marching Saturday in a funeral procession that turned into a protest in Damascus, activists said.

New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose dispatches captured untold stories from Baghdad under "shock and awe" bombing to Libya wracked by civil war, died Thursday of an apparent asthma attack in Syria while reporting on the uprising against its president....