KOHAT, Pakistan  – Pakistani Taliban militants released a video tape Sunday of them beheading a Polish geologist whom they said they killed because Pakistan’s government refused to release Taliban prisoners. The Islamist militants said Saturday they had executed the Polish engineer, Piotr Stanczak, who they kidnapped in September, because the …

CAIRO – A Hamas leader on Sunday played down reports that his group wanted to establish a new umbrella body to replace the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole representative of the Palestinians. Mahmoud al-Zahar told Al Jazeera television that remarks by Hamas’s leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, that some …

JERUSALEM/GAZA  – An Egyptian proposal to stabilize post-war Gaza calls for an extended truce between Israel and Hamas, a prisoner exchange and the initial opening of at least two of the enclave’s border crossings, diplomats said. Ahead of an Israeli election on Tuesday, negotiations in Cairo have grown increasingly intense …