Syrians are caught between government bombardment of civilian areas and ruthless Islamist groups in a conflict increasingly driven by foreign powers and marked by the "spread of extremism", U.N. war crimes investigators said on Thursday. Islamic State or ISIS forces, who control large parts...

Russia is delaying the launch of an international investigation aimed at assigning blame for chemical weapon attacks in Syria, U.N. Security Council diplomats said on Wednesday, though Moscow's U.N. envoy said the holdup was for technical reasons. In a letter to the 15-nation council...

 Kurdish authorities said on Tuesday they suspected a homemade rocket fired by Islamic State at their Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq contained chemical substances, accusing the Islamist insurgents of an increasing use of chemical weapons, Reuters reported. The Kurdistan Region's...

U.S. crude rose 6 percent on Friday, notching its first weekly gain in two months, after a rally in gasoline from refinery outages and concerns about strife in Yemen fed a second frenzied day of short-covering in oil. Market players also kept an eye on a storm that appeared to be...