ANKARA — The suicide bomber behind a deadly attack here was a former far-left militant believed to have joined the Kurdish separatist movement fighting a violent 22-year campaign, newspapers said on Thursday.

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military confirmed on Thursday that a body found floating in the Euphrates was one of three American soldiers snatched by Al Qaeda 12 days earlier, as a bomb attack hit civilian mourners at a funeral in western Iraq. Lieutenant Colonel Josslyn Aberle of US command …

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) — Iran is probably three to eight years away from producing a nuclear bomb if it so chooses, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned on Thursday.

DUBAI (AP) — US sanctions against Iran have caused damage to the country’s economy, Iranian business leaders and analysts say, even as the UN Security Council prepares to consider additional measures to force Iran to curb its nuclear programme.

AMMAN — Shaker Youssef Absi, the Palestinian who heads a shadowy militant group blamed for this week’s violence in Lebanon, is not a terrorist but a nationalist who seeks an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, his family says.

DAMASCUS (AFP) — Syria’s President Bashar Assad is a would-be reformer who is now gearing up for a second seven-year term having refused to bow to international calls for reform. Assad, running in a no-contest referendum on Sunday, came to power in July 2000 with the reputation of a modernist, …

TRIPOLI  (AP) — Heavy exchanges of gunfire erupted late Thursday between Lebanese troops besieging a Palestinian refugee camp and Islamic militants holed up inside, breaking a two-day-old truce.

NABLUS (Reuters) —  Israeli forces seized a Palestinian Cabinet minister and more than 30 other officials on Thursday in a new phase of a crackdown on Hamas that a United Nations envoy described as “troubling”.

BUCHAREST, Romania — Traian Basescu returned to the presidency on Wednesday (May 23rd) after the Constitutional Court formally validated the results of the May 19th impeachment referendum. Voters overwhelmingly rejected Parliament’s decision to dismiss Basescu last month for alleged constitutional violations. In his first statement since returning to the job, …

BRUSSELS, Belgium — KFOR personnel will remain in Kosovo if the UN Security Council does not pass a new resolution on future status, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in Brussels on Wednesday (May 23rd). The decision followed a meeting between NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and US President …