(The Daily Star)- The Palestinian Constitutional Court, a body set up months ago by President Mahmoud Abbas, ruled on Sunday that he can revoke the parliamentary immunity of lawmakers, a move that effectively allows him to sideline rivals. A verdict issued on Sunday which was swiftly...

Washington is in "close contact" with Ankara over the assault launched by American-backed Kurdish-Arab forces on the Islamic State group's bastion Raqa in Syria, a senior US official said Sunday. "We are in close close contact with our Turkish allies and that is why the chairman of joint...

(The Daily Star)- The death toll from an explosion and fire at a Pakistan shipbreaking yard last week has risen to 26, officials said Sunday. More than 50 others were wounded in the incident when a gas cylinder exploded and started a fire inside an oil tanker at the Gadani yard in the...

South Korean prosecutors arrested two former top presidential aides on Sunday in a snowballing influence-peddling scandal which has seen tens of thousands of people take to the streets to demand President Park Geun-Hye resign. Park's approval ratings have hit a historic low of five percent...

(The Guardian)- Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of a leading opposition newspaper and detained more pro-Kurdish officials, widening an anti-terror probe that has drawn condemnation from the west. The arrests, a day after the co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish...

Two Italians and a Canadian who were kidnapped in the south of conflict-torn Libya in September have been released and flown to Italy "in good health", the Italian government announced Saturday. The Italians, Danilo Calonego, 66, and Bruno Cacace, 56, and Canadian Frank Poccia were freed...

(The Guardian)- An Irish former altar boy has become the latest suicide bomber to blow himself up as part of Islamic State’s furious defence of Mosul, its last major stronghold in Iraq. Khalid Kelly, born Terrence Edward in south Dublin in 1967, converted to Islam when serving a jail term in...

(The Guardian)- A Russian frigate armed with cruise missiles has passed through the Bosphorus on its way to the eastern Mediterranean in a potentially ominous development for the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo. The Admiral Grigorovich, part of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, arrived off the...

(Carnegie Endowment)- Relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two previously staunch allies, have recently soured. This can be attributed to Egypt’s inability to perform its role as a guarantor of regional Gulf security against growing Iranian hegemony and its desire to cultivate other, less...

(Daily Star)- A mayor detained at a jail in the central Philippines for drug-related charges was killed along with another inmate in a shootout Saturday, police said, as a bloody crackdown on narcotics continues in the Southeast Asian country. Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera town in...

(The Guardian)- Squabbling between Saudi Arabia and Iran has sent the oil price down, as tension between the near neighbours threatened to derail talks aimed at cutting production by the Opec group of oil-producing countries. Riyadh is reportedly threatening to turn the screw on Tehran...

(The Daily Star)- The European Union's foreign policy chief discussed with her Turkish counterpart the arrest of Kurdish opposition lawmakers Friday, after expressing deep concern over the detentions. Federica Mogherini tweeted that she had spoken with Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut...

The United Nations cannot use Russia's unilateral pause in the fighting in Aleppo to send aid into the city's besieged eastern zone because it does not have the needed security guarantees, a U.N. spokesman said Friday. Russia and the Syrian army told rebels in Aleppo Wednesday to leave by...

Iran has sentenced protesters accused of attacking Saudi Arabia's embassy in response to the execution of a prominent cleric to up to six months in prison, their lawyer said Friday. Some of the defendants received three or six months in jail for disturbing public order while others were...

(Fox News)- The mother of an American journalist who vanished in Syria in 2012 is urging everyone to encourage and remind President Obama of his “obligation” to bring her son home. Austin Tice, a Marine and Georgetown Law student from Houston, disappeared in August 2012. A video released a...

A journalist working for Afghan television station Ariana News was killed by a roadside bomb in the southern province of Helmand Friday, his employer said, adding to a growing toll on media workers in Afghanistan this year. Witnesses said Nematullah Zaheer had been travelling with other...

The White House warned Thursday that failure to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact will put billions of dollars in US exports at risk to competition from China. Without TPP, which has been a hot-button issue in the US presidential campaign, China and other countries could move...

Russian and U.S. military officials have discussed additional safety measures for flights over Syria by Russian and U.S.-led coalition warplanes, Russian news agencies reported Thursday. Russia and the coalition support opposing sides in Syria's protracted civil war....

(Middle East Eye)- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Germany of being one of the world's worst countries for harbouring "terrorists", saying Berlin had not responded to requests to hand over suspects from the 15 July failed coup. Erdogan said that he had handed...

The start of this year proved deadly for one unit of about 100 Russian fighters supporting President Bashar al-Assad's troops in northern Syria. On Feb. 3, 38-year-old Maxim Kolganov was killed in a firefight with rebels near Aleppo when a bullet pierced his body armor and heart. Then,...