The United States is moving toward blacklisting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “terrorist” organization, subjecting at least part of the entity to financial sanctions in a new move against the Islamic republic, a US official said Tuesday.

Officials in Jerusalem said on Wednesday that Syria’s declarations that it did not want a war were important but that its actions would determine the future, Israel Radio reported.

The cooperation between Iran and Syria has recently broadened in a variety of areas, including the military, security, economic and scientific spheres.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul vowed Tuesday to defend the country’s secular traditions as he announced a fresh bid for the presidency despite deep-rooted opposition over his Islamist past.

Libya’s critics were furious at what they called a hasty and cynical rush for closer ties between the West and Muammar Qadhafi’s government after it freed six foreign medics in July.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday rejected US and British claims that Iranian weapons are being supplied to Taliban insurgents fighting the Afghan government and international troops.

Suicide bombings in a northern Iraqi town Tuesday targeted a religious minority in one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq in months.

In the nine months since she was born, tiny Fatima Jubouri first lost her father, then gunmen killed her mother and uncle and she was left alone and uncared for in a pile of garbage in Baghdad.

A Polish soldier was killed Tuesday in eastern Afghanistan, the Polish Defense Ministry said. He is the first from the European nation to die in the Afghan conflict, according to a CNN count of NATO casualty figures.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu easily won re-election as head of the rightist Likud party and pledged on Wednesday to reclaim Israel’s leadership.