Middle Orient

TEHRAN (FNA)- Seven detained Baha’i believers have confessed to setting up an illegal organization in Iran that took orders from Israel and others to undermine the Islamic system, an Iranian paper reported on Saturday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Sixteen people were killed and 11 were injured when a bus and a truck collided in southern Iran on Sunday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran, the number two oil producer in OPEC, expects the cartel to discuss ways of controlling the quotas of member countries at its next meeting in September, Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said.

TEHRAN (FNA)- World oil prices faced a roller coaster ride this week, tumbling on US demand concerns before rocketing higher on resurgent fears about West’s ultimatum to Iran over the latter’s nuclear energy programs, traders said.

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas security forces arrested Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s top Fatah representatives in the Gaza Strip on Friday, ratcheting up tensions between the rival factions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israel’s peace efforts with Syria should continue, without preconditions, after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert steps down, a candidate to succeed him said on Friday.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot dead an unidentified African migrant and detained two others while they were trying to cross illegally into Israel on Friday, a security official and a medical source said.

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered his security services on Thursday to release all pro-Hamas activists arrested in the occupied West Bank this week, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.

ZAGREB (Reuters) – Israel’s ambassador in Croatia on Thursday condemned the funeral given to a World War Two concentration camp head, saying it insulted the memory of those killed in the camp run by Croatia’s Nazi-allied Ustasha regime.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Abu al-Abed Abu Karsh sees Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s political demise as almost irrelevant. For many Palestinians, Israeli governments come and go without ever bringing peace closer.