15 April 2013 Last updated at 12:39 GMT By Rana Rahimpour BBC Persian Service In 2011 Israel is alleged to have bombed what may have been an Iranian arms factory in Sudan Iranian [...]

Record unemployment and falling oil revenues in Iran have forced a growing number of Iranians to seek work in nearby Georgia. Iran’s currency, the rial, has plummeted sharply and harsh sanctions against the Islamic Republic in relation [...]

Three times as much opium was produced in Helmand in Afghanistan last year as when British troops arrived there in 2006 – and this year’s crop will be even higher, according to a new UN forecast. The UN Drugs and Crime Agency says [...]

15 April 2013 Last updated at 14:56 GMT Hosni Mubarak appeared in court on a stretcher on Saturday An Egyptian court has ruled that ex-President Hosni Mubarak should no longer be held over the killings of protesters during the [...]

15 April 2013 Last updated at 11:31 GMT The Formula 1 race has deeply divided Bahrain A car explosion in the heart of the Bahraini capital Manama has heightened security concerns ahead of Sunday’s Formula 1 Grand Prix. The [...]

15 April 2013 Last updated at 09:40 GMT Mussallam al-Barrak (right) was jailed for a speech he gave in October A prominent Kuwaiti opposition leader has been jailed for five years for insulting the emir. Mussallam al-Barrak, [...]

15 April 2013 Last updated at 07:20 GMT The attack in Nasariyah came days before elections At least 15 people have been killed and dozens more wounded in a series of early morning explosions in cities across Iraq, officials [...]

14 April 2013 Last updated at 22:54 GMT By Simon Atkinson Business reporter, BBC, Dubai Duplays has almost 40,000 members in the UAE Whether you want to keep fit or make friends, [...]

14 April 2013 Last updated at 20:40 GMT At least 25 people, many of them children, have been killed in two Syrian government air strikes, activists say. The UK-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR) said one strike [...]

14 April 2013 Last updated at 15:17 GMT Rights groups had called for a criminal investigation into the deaths of civilians in the conflict Israel’s military has said it will not order a criminal investigation into the [...]

14 April 2013 Last updated at 14:40 GMT At least 16 people have been killed in north-east Syria by government air strikes, activists say. The UK-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR) said the strikes targeted rebel-held [...]

More than two years after the start of the Syrian uprising, the BBC has spoken exclusively to some of the boys whose actions helped spark the country’s revolution. Inspired by some graffiti in Deraa, celebrating the Arab Spring, the boys [...]

Kuwait may not have had an Arab Spring of its own, but it is no stranger to protests and political division. In an attempt to show it is looking after its people, the Kuwaiti government has now announced it will pay $2.6bn to settle bank loans [...]

More than two years after the start of the Syrian uprising, the BBC has spoken exclusively to some of the boys whose actions helped spark the country’s revolution. Inspired by some graffiti in Deraa, celebrating the Arab Spring, the boys [...]

13 April 2013 Last updated at 19:21 GMT Salam Fayyad was appointed prime minister in 2007 The Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has resigned, after a long-running dispute with President Mahmoud Abbas. Official Palestinian [...]

13 April 2013 Last updated at 08:44 GMT Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool says President Mubarak [...]

12 April 2013 Last updated at 23:58 GMT By Raffi Berg BBC News Israelis have a reputation for straight-talking, a quality that visitors are not always prepared for. But what [...]

Three days on from the powerful earthquake which hit Iran’s Bushehr Province, local people there are starting to assess the devastating impact. With the Iranian government having declared the rescue operation complete, the focus has now [...]

12 April 2013 Last updated at 13:36 GMT By Jim Muir BBC News, Beirut Syria’s rebel fighters have their backers, and the backers have their own interests As [...]

12 April 2013 Last updated at 15:03 GMT Egypt’s armed forces say they remained neutral during the revolution Egypt’s defence minister has denied claims that the armed forces were involved in killing and torturing [...]

12 April 2013 Last updated at 14:45 GMT At least 11 people have died and more than 30 wounded in bomb attacks at mosques in Iraq’s capital Baghdad and in the province of Diyala. The highest casualty toll occurred in Kanaan, [...]

A retrial of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak begins on Saturday. He faces charges of conspiring to kill protesters during the 2011 revolt that ended his 29-year rule, and corruption. A retrial was ordered in January after a court accepted [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 23:51 GMT By Rami Ruhayem BBC News, Baghdad Many Iraqis pay two bills for electric power – one to the government and another to [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 23:06 GMT Armed men dragged a body of a suspected collaborator through the streets of Gaza Human Rights Watch says Gaza’s Hamas government has failed to investigate the killings of seven Palestinians [...]

Five women activists have been arrested for wearing prayer shawls at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Israeli policewomen detained members of the religious group Women of the Wall for breaching orthodox rules governing prayers at the site, which [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 17:10 GMT Former Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and his wife Laila Trabelsi fled Tunisia Tunisia has received $29m (£19m) from what it calls looted assets held by ex-President Zine [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 17:04 GMT Al-Nusra has been dubbed a terrorist organisation by the US Syria has urged the United Nations Security Council to class the al-Nusra Front as a group linked to al-Qaeda. The Syrian foreign [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 14:34 GMT By Erica Chernofsky BBC News Jerusalem The women say restrictions on what they can do at the Wall are discriminatory One of Judaism’s [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 09:12 GMT The women say they should have the right to wear religious items at the Wall like men Five women have been arrested at Jerusalem’s Western Wall for breaching a ban on performing [...]

11 April 2013 Last updated at 00:11 GMT By Yalda Hakim BBC News, Mosul Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. [...]