At least 43 people, including 40 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants were killed across the country Friday, security forces said. The U.S-led international coalition launched airstrikes on five alleged ISIL bases in eastern al-Baghdadi area in Anbar province...

(Reuters) -  Saudi Arabia  has postponed Friday's public flogging of activist and blogger Raif Badawi on medical grounds, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Badawi was subjected to the first 50 lashes a week ago and was due to be flogged again after...

TRIPOLI, Reuters - Libyan factions agreed to continue United Nations-backed negotiations in Geneva next week over ending the country's political crisis, the U.N. said, though key representatives from Tripoli's self-declared government have stayed away. Nearly four years after a...

(Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande reassured Muslims on Thursday that his country respected them and their religion but said  France  would not compromise on its commitment to freedom and democracy. Speaking a week after Islamist militant violence that killed...

(Reuters) - Oil prices edged up in early Asian trading on Friday benefiting from positive technical price momentum, but analysts said it was too early for a trend reversal of steep recent price falls as structural oversupply remains in place. While the fundamental outlook for oil...

(Reuters) - Asian shares stepped back on Friday and major currencies  mostly stuck to late U.S. levels as investors caught their breath, after Switzerland's unexpected move to abandon its currency cap jolted markets already roiled by plungingcommodities prices. The euro...

(Reuters) - Belgian police killed two men who opened fire on them during one of about a dozen raids on Thursday against an Islamist group that federal prosecutors said was about to launch "terrorist attacks on a grand scale". Coming a week after Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in...

(Reuters) - Arab foreign ministers on Thursday endorsed a Palestinian plan to resubmit a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council calling for  Israel  to withdraw from occupied territories by late 2017. The United States helped defeat a similar draft resolution in a...

(Reuters) - Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said after talks in Cairo on Thursday he hoped that a Canadian journalist working for Qatar-based Al Jazeera television could be released from prison in Egypt . Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy, Egyptian Baher Mohamed and...

(Reuters) - The Pentagon transferred five Yemenis held at Guantanamo prison to foreign custody on Wednesday in the first handover of detainees in 2015, sending four to Oman and one to Estonia despite Republican calls for a moratorium on the resettlements. U.S. officials...

(Reuters) - Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers will press ahead with a plan for more sanctions on Iran , the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday, despite White House warnings that they risked derailing nuclear talks. Lawmakers, who say...

(Reuters) - A 12-year-old boy was shot dead in Cizre in southeast Turkey on Wednesday, the sixth person to be killed in the largely Kurdish town in the last three weeks, security sources said. Local witnesses said police teams were traveling through the area at the time he was...

(Reuters) - A Libyan warplane attacked a fishing trawler carrying gasoline to the port of Benghazi this week after the internationally recognized government suspected it of supplying Islamist militants, a military official said on Thursday. Libya's recognized government,...

(Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday compared Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to the Islamist militants who killed 17 people in Paris last week, saying both had committed crimes against humanity. Davutoglu said Israel's bombardments of Gaza and...

 A controversial French comedian, Dieudonne M'Bala, is to stand trial after writing a Facebook comment sympathizing with Amedy Coulibaly, French media reported Wednesday. Paris prosecutors began a criminal investigation on Monday after...

 UN-backed peace talks with one of the two formal sides of Libya's warring factions started on Wednesday in Geneva in an effort to end the country's political and security crisis. "We are starting a process, it’s going to be a long process, it’s...

Google released a new version of its Translate app on Wednesday, that promises to be far more powerful, with features that include rapid real-time translation and the ability to translate images like street signs. While Mountain View points out that the new update is in a...

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Jawad Zarif held intensive talks on Tehran's disputed nuclear program on Wednesday, returning for an evening session before handing off to their deputies, officials said. Iran  and six world...

(Reuters) - France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is ready to be used to support military operations against Islamic State in Iraq , French President Francois Hollande told military personnel aboard the vessel on Wednesday. "Thanks to the Charles de Gaulle we will have...

BEIRUT (The Daily Star)- The families of Islamist inmates in Roumieh Prison called for concerted efforts to pressure the authorities to grant them permission to visit their relatives following the weekend crackdown on the prisoners’ cells in the notorious Bloc B. “The...