Close allies of Iran's former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose presidency was marked by confrontation with the West, said Monday that the country's supreme leader recommended he not run in next May's presidential election because he is a polarizing figure among hard-liners.

Iranian media are saying the country's banks will begin issuing credit cards for the first time in decades.

A Canadian-Iranian retired professor was released from prison on "humanitarian grounds" and flown out of Iran on Monday, state media reported, ending her months of detention alongside other dual nationals swept up by hard-liners in the security services.

In the past year, more than 250,000 undocumented Afghan refugees have returned to their impoverished, insurgent-plagued country under pressure from Pakistani authorities.

Dozens of civilians were killed in fresh government airstrikes on the contested city of Aleppo, Syrian activists said Sunday, as the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the spiraling violence in Syria

Nahed Hattar, 56, was preparing to enter the courthouse for a hearing when the lone gunman shot him at close range.

Israeli lawmakers have proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content Israel considers to be incitement.

A senior Israeli military official on Sunday said a massive underground barrier being built along the Gaza border to defend against Hamas tunnels should be finished in a matter of months, dealing what he said would be a serious blow to the Islamic militant group.

Security personnel and their escorts were brought to public hospitals in Turkey's capital, Ankara. Turkey is covering all transportation and treatment costs.

Syria's top diplomat told the world's nations Saturday that his country's belief in military victory is greater now because the army "is making great strides in its war against terrorism" with support from Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters.

Residents of a western Baghdad neighborhood were preparing for Ashoura, which commemorates the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

The EU border agency, Frontex, recently said more than 12,000 migrants arrived in Italy from Egypt between January and September this year.

Iranian forces have had a series of tense encounters with U.S. naval vessels over the past year. Iran briefly detained 10 U.S. sailors in January after their boats drifted into Iranian waters.

British Tornado and Typhoon aircraft stationed at a U.K. air base in Cyprus are pounding Islamic State targets ahead of a major offensive by Iraqi security forces next month to recapture the key northern city of Mosul from IS militants, a senior Royal Air Force officer says.

Syrian troops captured a rebel-held area on the edge of Aleppo on Saturday, tightening their siege on opposition-held neighborhoods in the northern city after what residents described as the heaviest air bombardment of the civil war.

What transpired alongside Highway 60 would quickly become obscured in a contest of international finger pointing. "It felt like a moment of madness," said Ammar al-Selmo, a local rescue worker, who was in a building across the street.

A triple suicide bombing against a security check point north of Baghdad on Saturday killed at least 11 members of the security forces, a police officer said.

War crimes investigators collecting evidence of the Islamic State group's elaborate operation to kidnap thousands of women as sex slaves say they have a case to try IS leaders with crimes against humanity but cannot get the global backing to bring current detainees before an international tribunal.

Military and civilian families won’t be returning to Turkey for the foreseeable future, as the Pentagon decided this week to change the status of permanent duty assignments there to one-year, unaccompanied tours, Air Force officials in Europe said Friday.

The top 12 leaders of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan have been killed this summer during an American-backed Afghan special operations offensive in the country’s eastern region, the top American commander for Afghanistan said.

The week's breakdown in the diplomacy on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly occurred as violence in Syria accelerated. Several high-profile and deadly attacks suggested the war could be entering a darker phase.

A fire at one of Iraq's major oil fields could hinder military and humanitarian efforts as operations to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul get underway.

Gallery

The main Kurdish insurgent group in Iran will keep up its guerrilla campaign against security forces "to protect and defend" Kurds living there, its deputy leader said, calling the fight necessary after the Islamic Republic's nuclear deal with world powers.

In making peace with one of Afghanistan's most infamous warlords and a U.S.-designated terrorist, President Ashraf Ghani is hoping to edge the Taliban closer to the negotiating table in a bid to end its 15-year conflict.

The bodies of 162 people had been pulled from the waters off the Egyptian coast by Friday, two days after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsized in the Mediterranean while attempting to head to Europe.

Syria's military threatened a ground offensive in Aleppo and pounded the city's rebel-held neighborhoods with airstrikes on Friday, killing dozens, demolishing buildings and damaging a main water station in an escalation that could doom faltering attempts to revive a cease-fire.

An Iranian general in charge of the Islamic Republic's air defense says his forces warned off an American U2 spy plane trying to fly over his country.

In the three days since the Iraqi city of Fallujah was reopened for residents following its recapture from the Islamic State group, just over 500 families have returned home, Maj. Gen. Saad al-Harbea, the head of west Baghdad operations, said.

The Pentagon could request an additional 500 U.S. troops be sent to Iraq to assist in the fight to defeat the Islamic State group in Mosul, a senior defense official confirmed to Stars and Stripes.

The top U.S. military officer told Congress on Thursday that he believes Russia bombed a humanitarian aid convoy in Syria earlier this week, killing 20 civilians in an "unacceptable atrocity," as the bitter feud between the two nations over the five-year Syrian civil war escalated further.

Hassan Rouhani joined in opposing a call by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to halt all flights over Syria in efforts to get relief shipments through.

Afghan officials signed a peace agreement Thursday with representatives of Hezb-e-Islami, Afghanistan’s second-largest insurgent group, led by an Islamist warlord and U.S.-designated “global terrorist.”

Backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and paramilitary forces, Iraqi government troops on Thursday pushed Islamic State group militants from a key town north of the Iraqi capital, days after launching an operation to retake it, a military spokesman said.

The U.N. suspended aid deliveries on Tuesday after the convoy was struck near Aleppo in northern Syria the previous day. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said one of its employees and around 20 civilians were killed.

A volunteer group that rescues civilians from bombed-out buildings in Syria on Thursday won the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as the "Alternative Nobel," together with activists from Egypt and Russia and a Turkish newspaper.

The United States and Russia are taking their differences over the conflict in Syria to new heights, after trading ferocious allegations of duplicity and malfeasance at the United Nations Security Council.

Aviation giants Airbus and Boeing Co. have received permission from the U.S. government to sell aircraft to Iran, part of landmark deals potentially worth some $50 billion in total following last year's nuclear accord.

President Bashar Assad rejected U.S. accusations that Syrian or Russian planes struck an aid convoy in Aleppo or that his troops were preventing food from entering the city's rebel-held eastern neighborhoods, blaming the U.S. for the collapse of a cease-fire many had hoped would bring relief to the war-ravaged country.

A series of fires at Iranian petrochemical plants and facilities have raised suspicions about hacking potentially playing a role, with authorities saying that "viruses had contaminated" equipment at several of the affected complexes.

The short-term extension, from Sept. 30 until Oct.31, will allow the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, to complete its fourth report, the U.N. said in statement Thursday.

A new Israeli spy satellite is operational and taking high-quality pictures after suffering technical difficulties during its launch earlier this month, defense officials said Thursday.

A Canadian lawmaker touted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada's first Afghan-born cabinet minister said Thursday she recently learned from her mother that she was born in Iran.

The graffiti that appeared on a wall near the mosque in Mosul where the Islamic State leader declared his caliphate two years ago was a small but symbolic act of rebellion.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called on Russia and Syria to cease flying over Aleppo, just days after a convoy carrying human-aid supplies to civilians in the besieged city was attacked by warplanes.

The Russian navy will send its sole aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean as part of Moscow's efforts to reaffirm its influence in Syria and showcase its resurgent military might.

ANALYSIS

A series of bills before Congress this month is the surest sign yet that Saudi Arabia can no longer claim the privileged status it has held largely unchallenged for decades in Washington.

Yemeni officials say an American who worked as an English teacher in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, has been detained on suspicions of espionage.

An airstrike in northern Syria killed four medics responding to an earlier bombing raid, a relief group said Wednesday, as the U.N. announced it would resume aid deliveries suspended after an attack on a convoy two days ago that killed 20 people.

An attacker armed with a knife tried to enter the Israeli Embassy in Turkey on Wednesday before being shot and slightly wounded by Turkish security officials, an Israeli official said.

Iran's chief of staff of the armed forces says a $38 billion aid deal between the United States and Israel makes Iran more determined to strengthen its military.

After a series of Saudi-led airstrikes that reportedly killed and wounded civilians in Yemen, members of both the House and the Senate have introduced legislation to block a $1.15 billion arms sale that would supply the longtime American ally with a fresh contingent of tanks.

The U.S. military watched an armed group in eastern Syria for at least two days before launching an airstrike on Saturday that was halted after Russia reported the attack hit Syrian regime forces, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said Tuesday.

Volunteers were still dousing the fires from an overnight attack on an aid convoy that killed 20 civilians as the U.N. announced Tuesday it was suspending overland aid deliveries in Syria, jeopardizing food and medical security for millions of besieged and hard-to-reach civilians.

Joint U.S.-Russian operations are now in jeopardy after a failed ceasefire in war-torn Syria, Gen. Herbert J. "Hawk" Carlisle said Tuesday.

The Afghan government will investigate a series of U.S. airstrikes that apparently killed eight people over the weekend, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday.

A German scholar testified Tuesday that it's possible to de-radicalize violent Muslim extremists using the same techniques developed in Europe to help neo-Nazis break with their pasts.

It was billed by President Barack Obama as "the single largest pledge of military assistance in U.S. history," a gift from the American taxpayer to the Israeli taxpayer, totaling $38 billion over 10 years, complete with squadrons of F-35 fighter jets.

Yemeni security officials say an American who worked as an English teacher has been taken from his house in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Israel's military said its troops shot and killed a knife-wielding Palestinian on Tuesday who tried to stab a soldier at the entrance to a village near the West Bank city of Hebron.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on a Syrian-based radical group formerly affiliated with al-Qaida, the State Department said Tuesday.

At least a dozen humanitarian aid workers, and an unknown number of civilians, were killed Monday in an airstrike on a convoy delivering assistance west of Aleppo that the Obama administration said was likely launched by the Syrian government or Russia.

Vladimir Putin is the man to watch on the global stage these days, the assertive Russian president who casts himself as a peacemaker even as he plays a troublemaker.

A growing number of dual nationals, a status Iran does not recognize, have been arrested in recent months by the hard-line Revolutionary Guard Corps in what is likely a message to the moderate Rouhani administration that negotiated the nuclear deal with six global powers.

A spokesman for Libyan forces based in the east accused a rival militia allied with the U.N.-backed government of carrying out an airstrike Tuesday that killed at least six women and a child.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother President Raul Castro during a one-day state visit in Havana on Monday.

U.S. airstrikes in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan killed eight Afghan police officers, an Afghan official said Monday. U.S. officials said strikes were carried out in response to an “immediate threat.”

GALLERY

Check out some of the tasks necessary to support and conduct flight operations aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Tuesday's gathering of the top U.S. and Russian diplomats, and more than a dozen of their Arab and European counterparts, ended with ritual reaffirmation of a cease-fire that has all but disintegrated, and promises of future negotiations. But it left Syria no closer to peace.

A U.N. humanitarian aid convoy inside Syria was hit by airstrikes Monday, U.N. officials said, as the Syrian military declared that the week-long U.S.-Russian brokered cease-fire had failed.

A U.S. permanent resident detained for a year in Iran over spying allegations has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and a $4.2-million fine, his supporters said Tuesday, part of a wide crackdown on those with foreign ties which followed the nuclear deal.

"This is going to be a challenging battle. Mosul is a large city, and ISIL has embedded itself deeply in that city," President Barack Obama said after meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister. "It will be a tough fight."

Turkey announced plans to create a safe zone in Syria the size of the Grand Canyon, a campaign that could be one of the biggest foreign military interventions in its modern history.

President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will strategize about the upcoming offensive to take back the northern city of Mosul when they meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Saudi Arabia says it has uncovered an Islamic State group-linked terrorist network that was involved in past attacks in the kingdom and was planning future attacks against civilians, security personnel and government sites.

Amnesty International says it has evidence that a Saudi-led coalition battling Yemeni rebels dropped a U.S.-made bomb on a hospital, and is calling for a halt to arms sales to the coalition.

A patrol in Dammam's al-Khudariya district came under fire late Saturday night.

Saudi Arabia is accusing Iran of supplying weapons to Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen and is urging the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran for violating an arms embargo.

Islamic State militants shot down a Syrian warplane on Sunday as Syrian forces regained ground lost to the extremists following a U.S.-led airstrike that hit government forces the day before, state media said.

A U.S.-Russian cease-fire deal for Syria was on the brink of collapse Sunday after a week of mishaps and setbacks that exposed the fragility of the plan.

Once Syria's largest city, Aleppo has been a horrific battleground since 2012, divided between government and rebel-held areas.

No one claimed responsibility, but Islamic militants have been involved in multiple such attacks.

Libyan officials say troops loyal to the internationally recognized parliament have repelled an attack on two key oil terminals.

Four Palestinian attackers were shot dead after carrying out attacks on Israelis over the weekend.

Bahman Golbarnezhad, an Iranian cyclist has died after a crash in a C4-5 cycling road race at the Rio de Janeiro Paralympics on Saturday. International Paralympics Committee said it believes this is the first death in a Paralympics.

Most of those who were allowed to return on Saturday appeared to be among those who had fled as soon as the Islamic State entered Fallujah. They used an Internet form to sign up to return.

The U.S. military said it halted a series of airstrikes Saturday in eastern Syria after Russia warned the United States that it mistakenly struck and killed Syrian military forces.

Gallery

Just outside the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia lies one of Islam's most important historical sites — a cave where, according to tradition, the Prophet Muhammad spent time in seclusion, contemplation and self-reflection.

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian who stabbed a soldier in the West Bank, the military said Saturday, a day after Palestinians carried out several assaults.

In a speech to the Arab world seven years ago, President Barack Obama warned that Israeli settlements on occupied territories were undermining hopes for peace. "It is time for these settlements to stop," he declared. As Obama heads into the home stretch of his presidency, he leaves behind an unfulfilled vision.

Iran's atomic agency is denying that the European Union has demanded full details of its manufacture of centrifuge parts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday questioned the U.S. commitment to a shaky cease-fire in Syria, suggesting that Washington wasn't prepared to break with "terrorist elements" battling Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

A Pakistani court on Saturday adjourned the case of a British-Pakistani woman's murder until Sept. 23 to give police more time to finalize charges against her father and ex-husband, who are accused of slaying her in the name of honor, police and lawyers said.

When cars can talk to the Internet, hackers can talk to cars. Which is why Volkswagen has become the latest in a string of companies entering the automotive cybersecurity realm. The German company is collaborating with three former employees of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency.

Small numbers of U.S. special operations forces for the first time are accompanying Turkish government forces and their Syrian opposition partners fighting Islamic State militants inside Syria, military and administration officials said Friday.

The Sept. 7 airstrike took place near Raqqah, which the terrorist group uses as its headquarters in Syria, and killed Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, known as “Dr. Wa’il,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a prepared statement.

A Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric accused of fomenting a failed coup in Turkey in July spoke at length for the first time on Thursday about the withering post-coup crackdown on his supporters and other dissidents by the Turkish government, calling it "a display of hate and rage."

The agreement with the family marks the culmination of nearly 18 months of negotiations since the president publicly apologized for the deaths of the two aid workers - who were being held hostage by al-Qaida - and the White House pledged that their families would be compensated.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid to Syria's besieged rebel-held part of the city of Aleppo were held up for yet another day as heavy fighting broke out Friday on the edges of Damascus between government forces and insurgents.

Rear Adm. James Malloy relieved Rear Adm. Jesse Wilson as the strike group's leader Wednesday during a change-of-command ceremony in the forecastle of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower while it operated in the Persian Gulf, the Navy said.

The father and stepmother of a Marine veteran pressed their claims against the federal government for years, but in a brief decision Thursday, a judge ended the battle that had illuminated the wartime world of security contractors.