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All US troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, President Barack Obama has announced. He ordered a complete withdrawal from the country, nearly nine years after the invasion under President George W Bush. About 39,000 US troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 165,000 in 2008. The US and Iraq were in "full agreement" on how to move forward, Mr Obama said, adding: "The US leaves Iraq with our heads held high."

More than 30 civilians and as many as a dozen soldiers were killed Monday in an upsurge of violence in Syria, most of them in the central city of Homs that is rapidly emerging as the epicenter of armed resistance to the government led by President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned.

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday denounced allegations by the United States of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, suggesting they were a pretext for further building an international consensus against Iran, state media reported.

The United Nations' top human-rights official assailed the Syrian government Friday for a campaign of "ruthless repression and killings" and called for the international community to take steps to prevent the nation from plunging into "full-blown civil war."

A top official in Iran's space program admitted that the country's attempt to launch a monkey into outer space ended in failure, according to reports.

A Syrian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen has been indicted on charges of spying on American activists opposed to the Syrian regime.

Vice President Biden says the "entire world" should unite against Iran for its alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to the U.S.

Blackberry, which has been plagued by service outages in Europe, the Middle East and India this week, reports that disruptions have spread to Latin America.

Large numbers of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been cut off from Internet and messaging services, phone companies in the affected regions said Monday. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. gave few details beyond a brief statement saying that customers were “experiencing issues,” but telecommunications companies in the Middle East and Europe laid the blame at the Canadian company’s door.