Lawyers

• Israel faces threats ranging from rockets to nuclear: defense minister

  Israel faces a wide variety of threats ranging from Islamic militants wielding missiles and rockets to nuclear attack, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Tuesday during a visit to the United States.

• Britain's Blair says 2003 Iraq invasion played role in Islamic State rise

  Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the 2003 invasion of Iraq played a part in the rise of the Islamic State militant group, and apologized for some mistakes in planning the war, in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

• Middle East would be more stable if Saddam, Gaddafi still in power: Trump

  U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it's "not even a contest".

• Iraq PM sacks cabinet officials, says reform drive under threat

  Iraq's prime minister dismissed his cabinet secretary on Wednesday as part of an ambitious reform drive he said was under threat from corrupt politicians and Shi'ite militia leaders who use their armed followers for political ends.

• Saddam's former army is secret of Baghdadi's success

  A year after declaring his caliphate, it is clear that the secret of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's success is the army and state he has built from the remnants of Saddam Hussein's military, and the allegiance he has won or coerced from alienated Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

• Iraq Shi'ite militia take lead in campaign to reverse Islamic State gains

  Iraq's Shi'ite paramilitaries said on Tuesday they had taken charge of the campaign to drive Islamic State from the western province of Anbar, giving the operation an openly sectarian codename that could infuriate its Sunni population.

• Russia offers military aid to Iraq during PM visit

  Russia offered visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi military and other aid on Thursday to help push back Islamic State militants who have made further sweeping gains in both Iraq and Syria this week.

• Statue row blots Mandela's post-apartheid vision for South Africa

  South Africa's University of Cape Town removed a statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes on Thursday to cheers from students, a symbolic move that exposes persistent racial divides two decades after the end of apartheid.

• Public Saudi welcome for Iran nuclear deal masks private unease

  Saudi Arabia, whose late King Abdullah once urged the United States to "cut off the head of the snake" by attacking Iran's atomic program, has publicly welcomed a framework nuclear deal with Tehran, but in private mistrust remains deep.

• Iraqi forces try to seal off Islamic State around Tikrit

  Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and Shi'ite militiamen sought to seal off Islamic State fighters in Tikrit and nearby towns on Tuesday, the second day of Iraq's biggest offensive yet against a stronghold of the radical Sunni Islamist militants.

• Iraq army and Shi'ite militias launch attacks north of Baghdad

  Iraq's armed forces, backed by Shi'ite militia, attacked Islamic State strongholds north of Baghdad on Monday at the start of a campaign aimed at driving them out of the mainly Sunni Muslim province of Salahuddin.

• Baghdad's decade-old curfew to end on Saturday, Iraq's PM says

  Baghdad's decade-old curfew will end on Saturday and four neighborhoods will be "demilitarized", Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Thursday, as he tries to normalize the capital.

• After victory in key Iraqi town, time for revenge

  After helping government forces break Islamic State's grip over a strategic town just south of Baghdad on Saturday, Shi'ite militias decided it was time for payback.

• Britain may use mediaeval treason law to tackle Islamist fighters

  Britain may use a mediaeval law dating to 1351 to charge citizens with treason if they go to fight with Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said.

• Who runs the militant group Islamic State?

  Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim militant group, has seized a third of Syria and large areas of Iraq and this year proclaimed a caliphate across the two countries in the heart of the Middle East.

• U.S. general says cannot rule out larger ground role in Iraq

  The most senior U.S. military officer raised the possibility on Tuesday that American troops might need to take on a larger role in Iraq's ground war against Islamic State militants, but the White House stressed they would not deploy on a combat mission.