The Obama-administration is making contingency plans to use air bases in Central Asia to conduct drone missile attacks in northwest Pakistan in case the White House is forced to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan at the end of this year, Los Angeles Times quoting US officials reported on Monday.

Iraq’s radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has announced he is retiring from political life, in a handwritten note posted on his website.

Lebanon announced a new government on Saturday, breaking a 10-month political deadlock during which spillover violence from neighboring Syria’s civil war worsened internal instability in a country long plagued by sectarian strife.

Lebanese politician Saad al-Hariri said moderation must win out as Lebanon faces violence fuelled by the Syria war and a political impasse that has left it without a government.

At least seven Nato soldiers were killed while several others injured in result of a Taliban attack on a Nato convoy in Nagar province of Afghanistan on Sunday.

Sixty-five detainees have been released from Afghanistan’s Bagram detention centre, a move condemned by the US as “deeply regrettable”.

United Arab Emirates has opened its first smart mosque in Dubai using the Quick response (QR) code technology which offers digital access to mosques.

Algeria has started three days of national mourning for the 77 passengers who died in a military plane crash in the country’s northeast, as a commission of inquiry was launched to determine the cause of the accident.

Two days of talks between the Pakistani Taliban and their intermediaries in the tribal Waziristan region have concluded.

The second round of Syria peace talks has got off to a stormy start against a backdrop of continued rescue of civilians from the beseiged city of Homs.