Middle East, Asia | featured news

Pakistan has placed new travel restrictions on U.S diplomats in the country in the latest sign of the breakdown in ties.

For months officials in Pakistan have been demanding an end to CIA drone strikes in the country, and the brokering of a new relationship that would make them equal partners in the pursuit of terrorist groups. Now they have an unlikely ally in their demands: the former director of U.S. intelligence agencies, Dennis C. Blair.

A global campaigning organization says that almost 3,000 people have gone missing in Syria since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad more than four months ago. A survey by the online activist group Avaaz.org estimates that one person is disappearing in Syria every hour. The group released the survey results in a statement on Thursday.

Syrian forces shot dead at least 11 people during mass protests on Friday against President Bashar al-Assad, rights activists and witnesses said.

The head of a Washington nonprofit group was arrested Tuesday for allegedly running a front organization on behalf of elements of the Pakistani government, including its spy agency, for more than two decades in an effort to influence U.S. lawmakers and other top officials. Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, a U.S. citizen and resident of Fairfax, was charged in federal court in Virginia with participating in a long-term conspiracy to act as an agent of the Pakistani government without disclosing his affiliation.

The United States is suspending $800 million in military aid to Pakistan, White House Chief of Staff William Daley said today.

Syrian tanks rolled into a northwestern village and opened fire Monday, wounding at least six people in the latest military maneuver in a weekslong siege near the Turkish border that seeks to crush the country's pro-democracy uprising, activists said.

The hotbed of opposition to the regime of President Bashar Assad is surrounded by Syrian troops and tanks, apparently poised for an assault. Protests have risen dramatically in Hama, a city loaded with political symbolism.

Syrian tanks and helicopters opened fire and killed at least two civilians as the military advanced through a series of villages in northwestern Syria on Thursday, a push that sent residents running for the hills, several villagers said in phone calls with CNN.

Tens of thousands of Syrians poured onto the streets of cities around the country after prayers on Friday to press their demand for the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, apparently undeterred by concessions from a top ...