Spotlight
A Tunisian military appeals court on Friday handed down a heavier one-year suspended prison term to a former aide of President Moncef Marzouki for defaming the military, his lawyer said.
Ayoub Messoudi, 33, was earlier given a four-month suspended term on charges of "defaming" the army and "undermining senior officials in the military," lawyer Leila Haddad told AFP.

U.S. troops began arriving in Turkey on Friday to man Patriot missile batteries against threats from neighboring Syria, where the 21-month conflict between the regime and rebels has escalated.
Syrian air and ground forces were pounding insurgents dug in outside Damascus in a ferocious offensive being waged a day after a car bomb in the north of the capital killed at least 11 people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Thousands of Sunnis demonstrated across Iraq on Friday, in the latest of nearly two weeks of rallies criticizing the country's premier and demanding the release of prisoners they say are wrongfully held.
The protests, which come amid a political deadlock between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government and a secular Sunni-backed party that is in his cabinet but publicly opposes him, have blocked off a key trade route and forced heavy security measures.

The benches in Hawas park in the battered city of Aleppo are now mere metal skeletons, the wood stripped off by residents to burn so they can keep warm in the northern Syrian winter.
After months of battles devastated much of the city, the country's former commercial hub, the people of Aleppo are trying to lead as normal a life as possible, despite the deadly conflict that has raged for more than 21 months.

Egyptian security forces have seized U.S.-made anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles destined for Gaza, where militants have said they would acquire more weapons to use against Israel, security officials said on Friday.
The officials said six missiles were found hidden in the Sinai, which borders both the Gaza Strip and Israel, after security forces were tipped off to the hiding place.

A Yemeni man has been arrested on charges of spying for Israel and will be tried this week, the defense ministry said on Friday.
"Abraham al-Dharrahi, a 24-year-old Yemeni IT worker, will be tried in the next two days in Yemen's criminal court on charges of espionage for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency," the ministry quoted a judicial source as saying.

Syria has slammed as "biased" a United Nations report that called the conflict in the country overtly sectarian, state media said on Friday.
The foreign ministry accused the U.N. of a "lack of professionalism" in producing its report, and said that any sectarian dimensions to the conflict were because of foreign support for "armed groups," state news agency SANA said.

A slender majority of Israelis support the creation of a separate Palestinian state, but did not have high hopes for a peace deal, a survey said on Friday.
The survey by daily Israel Hayom asked more than 800 Israelis "do you support or oppose the idea of two states for two peoples, i.e. the creation of a Palestinian state independent from Israel?"

Syrian regime warplanes and troops on Friday blasted away at rebels close to Damascus, the day after a car bomb in a mainly Alawite northern district of the capital killed at least 11 people, a watchdog said.
Fighter-bombers were hitting Duma, northeast of Damascus, and army artillery was shelling the southwestern Daraya neighborhood which the rebels have led against regime assaults for weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The death toll from a truck bomb targeting pilgrims after the conclusion of annual mourning rituals for a revered figure in Shiite Islam has risen to 23, an official said on Friday.
A further 49 people were wounded in the Thursday evening attack in the town of Musayyib, which lies about half-way along the main route linking Baghdad and the shrine city of Karbala where millions of worshippers have attended Arbaeen commemoration ceremonies in recent days.
