Middle East
Hamas announced Saturday evening that it has reached an agreement with other militant groups in Gaza to stop firing rockets at southern Israeli towns to prevent retaliatory attacks.
Saudi health officials announced the first deaths from swine flu of this year's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, as four pilgrims succumbed to the disease soon after arriving in Saudi Arabia.
An Iraqi official says Baghdad has contacted Tehran in a bid to secure the release of three Americans detained in Iran, but has received no reply.
Iran will begin large-scale air defense war games Sunday aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, a senior military commander said Saturday, reflecting the country's concern that Israel could make good on threats to strike militarily.
President Hosni Mubarak entered Egypt's bitter soccer row with Algeria on Saturday, vowing in a televised speech that attacks on Egyptians abroad will not be tolerated.
A retired British couple snatched from their yacht by Somali pirates said in an interview broadcast Friday they fear they could be killed within a week or handed to a terrorist group if a ransom demand is not paid.
Iraqi lawmakers on Saturday sought a compromise in a dispute over an election law that was vetoed by a vice president, throwing national polls slated for January into question.
Palestinian officials announced Friday that a new date for parliamentary and presidential elections will be set next month now that President Mahmoud Abbas has agreed to postpone the January vote, though the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers maintain they will boycott the voting.
Iran plans to launch a communications satellite by late 2011 with no outside help, a top Iranian official said Friday, after Italy and Russia declined to put it into orbit.
Increasing numbers of English-language Web sites are spreading al-Qaida's message to Muslims in the West. They translate writings and sermons once largely out of reach of English readers and often feature charismatic clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki, who exchanged dozens of e-mails with the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shootings.
A famous Lebanese pop singer, who normally stirs controversy for her seductive dresses and provocative dancing, has now been accused of singing a song with racist lyrics that compares black Egyptians to monkeys.
Egyptian soccer fans burned Algerian flags and rioted outside the Algerian Embassy in Cairo, smashing cars and shop windows, in an escalating row between the two countries over a bitter World Cup rivalry.
A top aide to Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader on Friday urged the country's fractious political blocs to solve a crisis over a key election law that threatens to delay national polls planned for January.
The militant Hezbollah group announced Thursday that Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has been re-elected as the Shiite Muslim group's leader for a sixth term.
Moshe Holtzberg celebrated his third birthday on Wednesday the way many Jewish children do - he got his first haircut. He appeared not to recall the tragic events of a year ago, when his parents were killed in a terror attack in Mumbai, India.
Israeli aircraft struck a weapons-manufacturing facility and two smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, in response to recent rocket attacks on Israel, the military said.
