Turkey raised natural gas prices over the weekend by as much as 14 percent, two sources said, while the energy regulator announced a similar increase in electricity costs as a deepening currency crisis stokes inflation. The lira has fallen 42 percent against the dollar this year, hit by...

US officials working on a Middle East peace plan have asked Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas about forming a confederation with Jordan, Abbas told activists Sunday, according to one of them. Abbas recounted the conversation he had with White House aides Jared Kushner and Jason...

Israel welcomed Saturday a US decision to end funding for the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), accusing the organisation which supports some five million Palestinians of perpetuating the Middle East conflict. Israel and the United States have accused the nearly 70-year-old agency...

Each Friday, volunteer medic Asmaa Qudih goes through a tense ritual: She prays, kisses her mother's hand and packs a bag with medical supplies as she heads off to work at the weekly mass protests along Gaza's border fence with Israel. Treating the wounded has become dangerous for...

Iran has given ballistic missiles to Shiite proxies in Iraq and is developing the capacity to build more there to deter attacks on its interests in the Middle East and to give it the means to hit regional foes, Iranian, Iraqi and Western sources said. Any sign that Iran is preparing a more...

The United States is ending its decades of funding for the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, the State Department announced Friday, a week after slashing bilateral U.S. aid for projects in the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. supplies nearly 30 percent of the total budget of the...

Palestinian ambassador to Washington Hossam Zomlot warned Washington on Friday against canceling all US aid to the United Nations agency serving Palestinian refugees. The administration of President Donald Trump is expected to announce in coming weeks that it will cease all financing of...

Iran rejected France's call for talks on issues beyond the nuclear dossier on Friday, saying it was impossible so long as Western powers failed to meet existing commitments. "There is no basis of trust for negotiations, certainly on subjects which are non-negotiable," said foreign...

The UN Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to renew for another year the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. The measure backing the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) calls on the Lebanese government to boost its naval capabilities, with the...

  An Israeli firm says it has sold US customers hundreds of its bullet-proof schoolbags, introduced in the wake of the Parkland school massacre. "We designed a bullet-proof backpack at the request of our distributors in the United States after the huge trauma caused by the...

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman jailed in Tehran for more than two years on sedition charges, was taken to the prison clinic after blacking out on Wednesday, her husband said. Richard Ratcliffe said she had suffered a series of panic attacks and Iranian authorities...

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that his government should be ready to "set aside" the 2015 nuclear deal if it is no longer in the country's national interests. "The JCPOA (nuclear deal) is not the objective, it is only a means," he said in a meeting with the...

Iraq will send a delegation to the United States seeking an agreement on financial transactions with Iran following Washington's reimposition of sanctions on Tehran, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday. "We are not with economic sanctions against any country and that is our...

The United States told UN judges Tuesday they had no jurisdiction to rule on Tehran's demand for them to order the suspension of debilitating nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. Washington cited security concerns in its first legal response to a suit by the Islamic Republic, which is...

The United States will "vigorously defend" itself in the International Court of Justice against Iran's challenge to the reimposition of US sanctions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday. Iran demanded in The Hague that the top UN court suspend the unilateral US sanctions, which were...

Israel will reopen the Erez border crossing with the Gaza Strip Monday, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, a week after closing it due to clashes. Lieberman said Sunday that the decision to reopen Erez, the only crossing for people in the north of the Palestinian enclave, was made...

Israel's prime minister said on Sunday that Jews were still at risk even decades after the Holocaust as he wrapped up a groundbreaking visit to Lithuania, a Baltic state once home to his forefathers. "For the Jewish people, what has changed in these 75 years? Not the attempts to destroy...

 The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned Israeli plans to build more than 2,100 settlement units across the occupied West Bank. “The Israeli settlement policy is illegal under international law and is a brazen violation of UN resolutions and aggression on rights...

An Iranian F-5 fighter jet crashed in southern Iran Sunday killing its pilot, state media reported. The jet, a training aircraft, crashed as it attempted to land in Dezful in the southwestern Khuzestan province, the official IRNA news agency said. Its pilot was killed but his...

Egyptian security officials said Saturday four policemen and four militants have been killed during clashes in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula. The officials said that militants armed with explosives and RPGs attacked a checkpoint at the entrance to el-Arish city. They said another...