Iraq's parliament has approved a new government including all major factions, ending nine months of deadlock after inconclusive elections. In a special session, MPs voted for the 29 ministerial candidates nominated by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shia, who was reappointed for a second term. But doubts persist about whether all the political groups can work together. The key ministries of interior, defence and national security remain unfilled because nominees could not be agreed. US President Barack Obama called the approval of the cabinet a "major step forward in advancing ...

The Day of Ashura is on the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar and marks the climax of the Remembrance of Muharram. It is commemorated by Shiites Muslims as a day of mourning for the martyrdom of Imam "Hussein ibn Ali", the grandson of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala on 10 Muharram in the year 61 AH (October 2, 680 CE). In some Shiite countries and regions such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Bahrain, the Commemoration of Imam Hussein has become a ...

This year reports extreme weather across the globe: A storm is brewing in the Middle East, from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Palestine/ Israel.

In some parts of the globe women gained sufferage around the time of the World Wars, while in others they came by this right more recently. Either way a whole array of women are exerting their voting rights today internationally.

Beirut: Lebanon was hit by a heavy winter storm on Saturday, disrupting flights at its international airport and destroying small training planes, an airport official said. The winds, which reached 100 km/h, destroyed the four planes parked at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport. The wind overturned some of the aircraft and rammed others into a nearby electricity pole, but no one was hurt.

Thousands of firemen and rescue workers fight to control blazes in which 41 have already died. The fires are the worst in Israel's 62-year history.

The Darfur Conflict is an ongoing guerrilla conflict or civil war centered on the Darfur region of Sudan. It began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) groups in Darfur took up arms, accusing the Sudanese government of oppressing or committing genocide against black Africans in favor of Arabs. One side of the conflict is composed mainly of the official Sudanese military and police, and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat ...

The bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups was the process by which the locations for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups were selected. The process began officially in March 2009; eleven bids from thirteen countries were received, including one which was withdrawn and one that was rejected before FIFA's executive committee voted in November 2010. Two of the remaining nine bids applied only to the 2022 World Cup, while the rest were applications, initially, for both. Over the course of the bidding, all non-European bids ...

On 28 November, WikiLeaks announced it was undergoing a massive Distributed Denial-of-service attack but vowed to still leak the cables and documents via prominent media outlets including El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times. The announcement was shortly thereafter followed by the online publication, by The Guardian, of some of the purported diplomatic cables including one in which United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently orders diplomats to obtain credit card and frequent flier numbers of the French, British, Russian and Chinese delegations ...