DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal urged the West Wednesday to lift its boycott of the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip. “I tell European nations … three years of trying to eliminate Hamas is enough. It is time for you to deal with Hamas, which has …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama phoned leaders in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday to promise that he will actively engage on Arab-Israeli peace efforts, the White House said. “He used this opportunity on his first day in office to communicate his commitment to active …

KABUL (Reuters) – The Taliban are fighting not to win power but to push foreign armies out of Afghanistan and U.S. President Barack Obama will only make the country more unstable by sending more troops, a former Taliban official said on Wednesday. “The plan that he had to increase the …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The Iraqi government has decided to bring home a yacht once owned by ousted dictator Saddam Hussein after failing to find a buyer for it in Europe because of the world economic crisis, a spokesman said Wednesday. The Ocean Breeze, which was built in 1981, will be …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. and Iraqi officials opened a water treatment plant in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum on Wednesday three and a half years after they began it, a sign that the area is finally quiet enough for long-promised reconstruction work. The $65 million plant provides water for 200,000 people …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A bomb blast struck the convoy of a university dean, killing four people and wounding 10 others in Baghdad on Wednesday, police said. Ziyad al-Ani, also a member of the Islamic Party — the largest Sunni Arab faction in parliament — was unharmed by the explosion which …

KABUL (Reuters) – A suicide car bomb killed two Afghan soldiers and wounded three Wednesday in the western province of Herat, the Defense Ministry said. Violence in Afghanistan has surged over the last year to its worst level since 2001, with Taliban militants launching more suicide and roadside bomb attacks …

MUGHRAQA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – It is hard to believe that the empty sea washing the shore of the battered Gaza Strip is the same Mediterranean of European pleasure yachts and bathing beaches. For 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, the westward sea is like the fourth wall of a …

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli army investigation into its use of white phosphorus munitions in Gaza is focusing on an incident in which 20 shells containing the substance were fired into a populated area, a newspaper said on Wednesday. The Haaretz daily said the incident occurred in the northern Gaza …

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel denied on Wednesday its armed forces used ordnance with depleted uranium during the Gaza Strip offensive, and said that could be proven by any U.N. investigation. Responding to a letter from Arab envoys, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Tuesday it would consult with member …