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Omanis vote Saturday to elect the powerless Majlis al-Shura consultative council, which Sultan Qaboos pledged to vest with some authorities in response to unprecedented social unrest.
Some 518,000 eligible voters out of about two million Omanis have been called to take part in the polls in which 1,133 candidates, including 77 women, are competing for four-year terms in the 84-seat council.
Full StoryThe West is trying but failing to instill "Iranophobia," Iran's supreme leader said Thursday in remarks that appeared to be prompted by, but did not directly address, U.S. allegations of a thwarted Tehran-sponsored assassination plot.
"The repeat of ineffective and stupid methods by hapless and distracted policymakers in the West (to spread) Iranophobia will again bear no result," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an army base in the western city of Kermanshah, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Full StoryU.S. President Barack Obama Thursday demanded answers from the pinnacle of Iran's government over an alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington and said the facts of the plan were not in dispute.
But he also declined to say whether U.S. officials believed that the alleged scheme was endorsed at the very highest levels of the Iranian regime, though ascribed it to a pattern of "dangerous and reckless" behavior by Tehran.
Full StoryBritain's Foreign Office has again summoned the Syrian ambassador to London over the alleged intimidation of exiled activists, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday, urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.
It is the third time this year that Syrian ambassador Sami Khiyami has been summoned by the British government amid unrest in the Arab nation, while it also rescinded his invitation to Prince William's wedding in April.
Full StorySyrian troops and armed dissidents clashed in two towns on Thursday, with at least 14 people killed, as the EU announced sanctions on a key Syrian bank in protest at its deadly crackdown on dissent.
In the first clash reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights five people were killed in Banash town in Idlib province in the northwest.
Full StoryKuwait's lower court on Thursday sentenced to death a member of the Gulf state's ruling family for killing his nephew, also a royal, a court statement said.
Sheikh Faisal Abdullah al-Sabah was convicted of shooting Sheikh Basil Salem al-Sabah to death at the latter's palace in June 2010, the statement said, apparently over a dispute on board membership in a sports club.
Full StoryThe European Union decided on Thursday to freeze the assets of the Commercial Bank of Syria, in a new set of sanctions over the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown of protesters, diplomats said.
"Today's decision is a direct consequence of the appalling and brutal campaign the Syrian regime is waging against its own people," said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Full StoryLibya's new regime fighters retreated under heavy fire from loyalists of Moammar Gadhafi in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday as their leaders backtracked on an announcement they had captured one of his sons.
The advancing fighters, who had been hoping to mop up the last pockets of resistance in two residential neighborhoods in the northwest of the city, withdrew at least two kilometers to the central police headquarters they had captured on Tuesday, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.
Full StoryIran on Thursday urged Saudi Arabia "not to fall into the trap" of believing U.S. claims that Tehran was behind an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, saying the accusations only served the United States and Israel.
"I am asking Saudi Arabia not to fall into the trap, because any disturbance in relations between countries in the (Middle East) region will only benefit the United States and the Zionist regime," said Ali Ahani,Iran's deputy foreign minister in charge of Europe and America affairs, according to the IRNA news agency.
Full StoryThe U.S. embassy in Damascus has hit back at apparent glee in the Syrian state media over the Occupy Wall Street movement sweeping the United States, posting a Facebook lesson on democracy.
On its official Facebook page, the embassy took a thinly veiled jibe at the regime of Bashar Assad, saying that, while there is dissatisfaction in America over the economy, that did not translate into police shooting "thousands of protesters" or demonstrators being tortured.
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