A ship, Dignité, flying the French flag with six people onboard sails off the coast of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica on June 25, 2011 to join the new pro-Palestinian aid flotilla. A French ship carrying humanitarian aid and six people on board has set sail from the port city of Corsica to join a Gaza-bound flotilla. The ship flying the French flag named Dignité (Dignity) headed for the... 

More than 1,500 Syrian refugees crossed to Turkey on Thursday, according to state-run Anatolian news agency, as the Syrian army swept up to the border in its campaign to stamp out anti-government protests. The provincial government in Hatay said on Friday morning that the total number of refugees registered at the temporary shelter camps had reached 11,739, compared with 10,224 a day earlier. Most... 

A view of Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor. Head of Israel’s Nuclear Energy Commission Shaul Horev says Tel Aviv has returned nuclear waste from its Sorek nuclear reactor to the United States. Horev, who spoke at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ministerial conference on nuclear safety in Vienna on Monday, did not specify the exact amount of waste, Israeli daily Ha’aretz... 

A court in Tunisia has sentenced ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his wife to 35 years in prison after finding them guilty of embezzlement and other charges. The conviction in absentia of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Leila Trabelsi came after a day-long trial before the Tunis criminal court. The couple fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14 after a month-long revolution that sparked a string... 

Israel's Navy head Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom. Israel’s Navy says it will not allow a new international flotilla of ships to break the blockade on the impoverished Gaza Strip and reached the coastal sliver. Speaking at a ceremony marking the completion of Israeli navy’s submarine training course on Sunday, Navy head Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom said Israel’s navy is going ahead... 

A Jerusalem rabbinical court has condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago. According to Ynet website, the large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs. Despite attempts to drive the dog... 

Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The direct action has been organised on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel. Saudi women have been encouraged to challenge the status quo and get behind the wheel Friday. The initiative is called “Women2Drive,”... 

The Islamic Republic of Iran successfully launches its second satellite christened Rassad (Observation) into the earth’s orbit. The satellite, which is the country’s first such imaging device, was launched by the Safir-e-Rassad satellite carrier on Wednesday thanks to Iranian aerospace scientists and experts’ endeavor, IRNA reported. Despite its 15.3-kilogram weight, which puts it... 

Twitter protesters in their green "uniforms". The U.S. government funded the creation of wireless networks to facilitate secret communications for opposition groups to avoid the control of authorities in nations such as Iran, Syria and Libya. According to The New York Times, the State Department and the Pentagon spent about $50 million to also create an independent network of mobile telephones... 

The Shiite Wifaq Party succeeded in staging a demonstration some 10,000 strong in the town of Sar, Bahrain, on Saturday. Movement leader Sheikh Ali Salman called a “big lie” the charge that Wifaq wanted an Iran-style theocracy, countering that it just wanted a civil state. The Wifaq demands for a constitutional monarchy in the small Sunni-ruled island kingdom had been met with a brutal crackdown... 

World View: The anti-regime demonstrations that worked so rapidly and unexpectedly in Tunisia and Egypt are faltering elsewhere as rulers fight to hold on to power The Arab awakening is turning into the Arab nightmare. Instead of ushering in democracy, the uprisings in at least three Arab states are fast becoming vicious civil wars. In the past 10 days, crucial developments in Syria, Libya and Yemen... 

Salma Abubaker Shtoot has been within a hair’s breadth of death. The conflict in Libya has no end in sight, as NATO intensifies airstrikes and increases what it calls “efforts to protect people.” It is those “efforts” that made a Libyan teenager choose death over life in a war-torn country. NATO has frequently claimed success in the military operation supposed to “protect civilians”.... 

Bahraini protesters demand an end to 40 years of rule of Al Khalifa dynasty. Anti-government protesters have once again taken to the streets in Bahrain, demanding an end to the rule of Al Khalifa dynasty. The massive protest rallies were held in towns and villages around the capital, Manama, following the Friday Prayers. Witnesses say Saudi-backed Bahraini forces attacked anti-regime protesters in... 

The situation around Syria continues to be in the spotlight of the politicians and the media. In recent days the situation in the country has sharply deteriorated. The tone of the comments in various western media outlets is nearly the same: they are blaming President Bashar Assad. At some point Milosevic and Gaddafi were subject to similar attacks by the Western media. Would Syria be subject to the... 

Iranian nuclear experts at the research centre of the uranium conversion plant in the Isfahan. The country is only a matter of months from creating a nuclear weapon. Iran is only a matter of months from being able to create a nuclear weapon, according to experts. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 54, has long been pushing his country’s nuclear capabilities, and at the current rate of uranium enrichment...