(Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has resigned, the first major cabinet change after Obama's Democrats were routed in mid-term elections three weeks ago. Obama was to announce Hagel's resignation at a White House event at 11:10 a.m. on Monday. Hagel, who had...

(Reuters) - An official under former hardline ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali appears set for a close run-off in Tunisian presidential polls with a rival who says he represents the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprising that toppled him. Preliminary results in the country's first...

QOM, Iran (AP) — Shiite and Sunni clerics from about 80 countries gathered in Iran's holy city of Qom on Sunday to develop a strategy to combat extremists, including the Islamic State group that has captured large parts of Iraq and Syria. Shiite-majority Iran has been helping...

BEIRUT, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Syria's state spending is expected to rise 12 percent to 1.55 trillion Syrian pounds ($9.10 billion) next year, driven by higher social support costs, state news agency SANA reported citing a draft budget presented to lawmakers on Sunday....

(Reuters) - Tunisians went to the polls on Sunday to vote for their first directly elected president, in the final step to be taken to full democracy after the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. More than three years since overturning Ben Ali's...

Bahrain's general and municipal election vote counting has started soon after polling stations across the country closed down their doors at 19:00 GMT, following a two-hour vote extension. Bahrain's state television broadcasted footage of election commission staffs counting the...

  (Reuters) - Tunisians vote on Sunday in a presidential election pitting an ex-official from the days of autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali against a rights activist appealing to the spirit of the 2011 revolt that ousted him. Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old former Ben Ali...

Reporting by Abdullah Al Ghadawi; Translation by Yusra Ahmed (Zaman Al Wasl)- Mahmood Zahhar, the prominent figure in the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), considered the attack on the Knesset last week that resulted in killing 5 Israelis, a...

  (Zaman Al Wasl)- Libya’s Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani told   Zaman al-Wasl that the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya would be worse than the rule of Muammar Gaddafi. Al-Thani pointing out that the practices and abuses...

Turkey's eleventh President Abdullah Gul on Friday denied a story published by the Iranian Press TV, an English-language television network, on its news website. Gul called the remarks attributed to him in the article "fallacious" and "unreal." ...

Islamic State has consolidated its grip on oil supplies in Iraq and now presides over a sophisticated smuggling empire with illegal exports going to Turkey , Jordan and Iran, according to smugglers and Iraqi officials. Six months after it grabbed vast swaths of territory, the...

Jordanian authorities on Thursday arrested deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in the kingdom Zaki Bani Arshid on the background of his earlier statements against the United Arab Emirates, a security source. “The security agencies arrested Bani Arshid over his...

 Tunisians are preparing to cast their ballots on Sunday to elect a new president in a vote billed as the country's first free and fair presidential election. Twenty-seven presidential candidates are vying for office in the weekend vote, the last phase of Tunisia's...

SOUSSE Tunisia (Reuters) - Tunisians were used to seeing Nidhal Selmi belting around a stadium, proudly sporting his country's red and white colors as a defender on the national football squad. So it was a shock when he appeared in a camouflage...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters attacked a government complex in the heart of Ramadi on Friday, local officials said, part of an apparently coordinated assault to seize full control of the provincial capital west of Baghdad. Gunmen fired...

(Reuters) - On edge but faithful to their religious routine, worshippers returned on Wednesday to the Jerusalem synagogue where four rabbis and a policeman were killed in a Palestinian attack a day earlier. The bloodstains had been washed away. But four memorial candles burned...

Reporting by Maher Radhwan; Translation by Yusra Ahmed HOMS (Zaman Al Wasl)- The number of Syrian disabled has increased significantly in the last three years since the revolution started in March 2011, as a result of indiscriminate bombing on...

Syria's once-promising economy has been set back more than 30 years by its brutal civil war, economists say, and it may never recover. Squeezed by sanctions and the fallout of the more than three-year-old conflict, the government faces dwindling revenues and is increasingly...

(Reuters) - There is no trace of Shenzhen Lanhao Days Electronic Technology Co Ltd at its listed address in the beige and pink-tiled "Fragrant Villa" apartment complex in this southern Chinese city. The building's managers say they’ve never heard of it.     But a...

Spanish lawmakers on Tuesday urged their government to recognise Palestine as a state, albeit only when the Palestinians and Israel negotiate a solution to their long-standing conflict. The symbolic motion, which echoes similar votes last month in Britain and...