JERUSALEM (Reuters) – War ends in the Gaza Strip, a new U.S. president is sworn in, and suddenly this week there is new talk about talks between sworn enemies Israel and Hamas. But talk may be as far as it goes. Neither the contenders in Israel’s election nor Barack Obama …

MIDYAT, Turkey (Reuters) – In a remote village near the Turkish-Syrian border, a land dispute with neighboring villages is threatening the future of one of the world’s oldest functioning Christian monasteries. Critics say the dispute, which has become a rallying cry for Christian church groups across Europe, is a new …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -When Iraqis last voted in 2005, some in Washington feared the mainly Muslim nation would veer in the direction of Iran, an Islamic theocracy, instead of becoming the moderate democracy they envisioned for post-Saddam Iraq. The question when Iraqis elect new provincial leaders on January 31 will be …

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian political leaders said on Wednesday any resumption of peace talks with Israel would require the Jewish state to commit to withdraw from land occupied in 1967 and freeze all settlement activity. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) issued a statement in the West Bank city …

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 …