Middle East | featured news

The head of Iran's nuclear energy agency announced Saturday that the country had launched a "serious" nuclear fusion research program, according to state-run Press TV.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in downtown Kabul on Sunday killing, three Afghans and raising fears about the prospect of further attacks in the capital as senior diplomats from dozens of nations are scheduled to arrive for an international conference on Tuesday.

As few as "a couple of thousand" U.S. troops may leave Afghanistan in the first phase of withdrawing forces from there beginning a year from now, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Israel will not allow an aid ship sent by a Libyan group to reach Gaza, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday, just over a month after Israeli commandos killed nine activists in a raid at sea.

General has met sharp resistance from the Afghan president to an American plan to assist villagers in fighting the Taliban on their own.

The president and Israeli prime minister will meet after a series of conflicts over Israel's Gaza blockade and building policies have sidelined direct peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

President Barack Obama hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office Tuesday morning for a fence-mending visit that comes in the wake of a series of diplomatic collisions and as U.S.

Iran said on Monday that Germany, Britain and the United Arab Emirates were refusing to provide fuel to Iranian passenger planes following unilateral U.S. sanctions on the Islamic state, the ISNA news agency reported.

"Israel will never apologize for defending its citizens," a high-ranking Israeli government official told CNN on Monday, after Turkey reportedly demanded an apology or an inquiry into an Israeli raid on an aid ship that killed nine Turkish citizens.

The general told a Senate panel that a 2011 deadline for the start of troop withdrawals was just “the beginning of a process.”

Leon Panetta cites governance problems, drug trafficking and the Taliban insurgency. Progress is "slower than I think anyone anticipated," he says.