U.S. President John F. Kennedy was remembered as a transcendent leader of a rising nation at a ceremony in Dallas on Friday, the 50th anniversary of his assassination. "Our collective hearts were broken," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told a crowd of about 5,000 who came to a frigid Dealey...

    A major thunderstorm hit the Gulf region on Thursday night with heavy rain lashing parts of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the Saudi capital Riyadh, which was the scene of major flooding earlier this week.   Earlier climate forecasts compelled the...

Rebels in Syria seized a key town Friday in Qalamoun province that has been under army control since the outbreak of the conflict, a monitoring group and the opposition said. Hundreds of rebels now control most of Deir Attiyeh, with the exception of the Bassel hospital and a small...

  Seven leading Islamist rebel groups in Syria say they are joining forces. A statement posted online said Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Suqour al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid, Liwa al-Haqq, Ansar al-Sham and the Kurdish Islamic Front had agreed to a "gradual merger". It said the new...