Iran said on Tuesday it was ready for "straight talks" with Saudi Arabia over contentious issues that have kept the rival Gulf powers at loggerheads for more than three decades.
Saudi Arabia has postponed Friday's public flogging of activist and blogger Raif Badawi on medical grounds, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi could still pardon three jailed Al Jazeera journalists who are now facing a retrial if he deems it appropriate, the country's foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Egyptian and Qatari intelligence officials have met in Cairo to discuss reconciliation as part of Saudi-brokered efforts to end an 18-month standoff over Doha's support of the Muslim Brotherhood, security and diplomatic sources said.
Three months after he took office with a mission to unite his broken, warring country, Iraq's new prime minister has swept away the divisive legacy of his predecessor with a burst of rapid and dramatic measures.
Six men held for more than a decade at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were flown to Uruguay for resettlement on Sunday, the latest step in a slow-moving push by President Barack Obama's administration to close the facility.
The Lebanese army detained a wife and daughter of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as they crossed from Syria nine days ago, security officials said on Tuesday, in a setback to the group as it comes under increased military pressure.
An American, a Briton and a South African were among several hostages Yemeni forces sought to free from al Qaeda this week, the defense ministry said on its website, describing a raid that a U.S. defense official said also involved U.S. special forces.
Iran and six powers failed on Monday for a second time this year to resolve their 12-year stand-off over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and gave themselves seven more months to clinch an historic deal.
President Vladimir Putin blamed the West for worsening relations with Russia since the Ukraine crisis and said Moscow would not allow itself to become internationally isolated behind another 'Iron Curtain'.
Top Canadian security officials are due to testify on Monday before a parliamentary committee about threats facing the nation in the same building where a man described as an homegrown militant opened fire last week as Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with lawmakers.
The man who killed a Canadian soldier and attacked the country's parliament building last week made a video of himself before hand, evidence he was driven by ideological and political motives, police said on Sunday.
About 100 police, firefighters and other emergency workers held a disaster-response drill in downtown Toronto's deserted financial district on Sunday following a week that saw two soldiers killed on Canadian soil.
Immediately after his sword falls, the Saudi Arabian executioner steps backwards to avoid soiling his clothes with the blood of the condemned man, whose headless body can be seen slumping over backwards in the shaky online film.
President Barack Obama will hash out a strategy to counter Islamic State on Tuesday with military leaders from some 20 countries including Turkey and Saudi Arabia amid growing pressure for the U.S.-led coalition to do more to stop the militants' advance.
Yemen's president named the country's U.N. envoy as prime minister on Monday in a move welcomed by the Shi'ite Muslim Houthi group which controls the capital, signaling an easing in the country's prolonged political crisis.
Taking aim at Islamic State, Saudi Arabia has mounted a battle for hearts and minds at this year's haj, warning pilgrims that the hardline group is "evil" and seeking to recruit their children to fight in Iraq and Syria.
Iran is to give a military grant to the Lebanese Army, the head of Iran's national security council said on Tuesday, boosting security forces that are already backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
American-led and Arab-backed air strikes carrying the fight against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria have dragged Washington into a new Middle East war - exactly the kind of conflict Barack Obama spent his presidency trying to avoid.
President Barack Obama wants some Arab participation in air strikes against the Islamic State in order to expand the campaign to Syria, reflecting U.S. concerns that any long-term campaign must count on regional involvement, U.S. officials say.
For decades the opposing poles of Middle East power politics, Saudi Arabia and Iran may be driven to set aside at least some of their differences by the rise of a mutual enemy: Islamic State.
