A Saudi court has jailed a man for 15 years after convicting him of recruiting 14 nationals to join al-Qaida's affiliate in neighboring Yemen, Al-Hayat newspaper reported Thursday.
A Riyadh court specialized in security cases convicted the unnamed Saudi national of recruiting the militants online after he held meetings in Yemen with al-Qaida leaders, the daily said.

Russia on Thursday issued a rare criticism of its ally Syrian President Bashar Assad, saying statements that he wanted to run in presidential elections in 2014 risked harming the atmosphere ahead of peace talks.
"Exchanging such rhetorical statements just makes the atmosphere heavier and does not make the situation calmer," Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the Interfax news agency in an interview.

Israeli troops killed a member of the Palestinian security forces in an exchange of fire in the northern West Bank overnight, sources on both sides said on Thursday.
"During an ambush organised to arrest an armed man... who had fired on Israeli soldiers several times in recent weeks, the man opened fire on soldiers, who fired back," the Israeli army said.

The United States is pressing for U.N. Security Council condemnation of heightened attacks in Syria in a move that could reopen divisions over the war, diplomats said Wednesday.
U.S. diplomats have proposed a draft council statement that would express "outrage" over government air strikes on the city of Aleppo.

Efforts to reach an Israel-Palestinian peace deal may need to be extended for another year, if parties agree on key issues by the time the current round of talks wraps up in April, the chief Palestinian negotiator said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry launched nine months of direct talks between the sides in July after a three-year stalemate, and has insisted he is aiming for a full deal and not an interim agreement by April 29.

Amnesty International on Thursday accused an al-Qaida-linked jihadist group in Syria of abducting, torturing and killing detainees at secret prisons in areas under its control.
The rights group said detainees held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) include children as young as eight and that minors have been sentenced to severe floggings and held with adults in "cruel and inhuman conditions".

An Egyptian official has resigned amid controversy over a poster to promote a new draft constitution that featured images of non-Egyptians and misspelled "Egyptians" in Arabic, state media reported Wednesday.
Amgad Abdel Ghaffar, head of the State Information Service, the government's media arm, had already apologized for the poster, which featured Caucasian-looking images under the caption: "All Egyptians Constitution."

The United States on Wednesday blacklisted a shadowy al-Qaida breakaway faction behind the bloody siege of an Algerian gas plant.
The Signatories in Blood, an armed unit founded by the one-eyed Mokhtar Belmokhtar last year when he split from Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

The European Union handed U.N. agencies 147 million euros for emergency aid to Syria on Wednesday, its biggest single donation so far to victims of the crisis.
"The suffering of the Syrian people is a stain on the world's conscience," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso days after the U.N. launched an appeal for emergency humanitarian aid for Syrians.

Mideast peace efforts are being "hampered" by Israeli settlement construction, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem said Wednesday in his traditional Christmas message.
"The Israeli-Palestinian talks resumed in late July, after three years of interruption, but the efforts are hampered by the continuous building of Israeli settlements," said Fuad Twal, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land.
