U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf have loudly pushed for hawkish policies by Washington to pressure, isolate and cripple Iran, but this high-stakes strategy is now being put to the test by the unexpected U.S. strike that killed Iran’s most powerful military commander last week, thrusting the region closer to full-blown conflict.

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck northwestern Iran early Friday, killing at least five people and injuring over 300 others, officials said. The temblor struck Tark county in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan province at 2:17 a.m., Iran’s seismological center said. The area is some 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran. Over 40 aftershocks rattled the rural region nestled in...

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen staged multiple airstrikes on a detention center operated by the Houthi rebels in the southwestern province of Dhamar, killing at least 100 people and wounding dozens more Sunday, officials and the rebels’ health ministry said. Franz Rauchenstein, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen, suggested that the death toll could be higher...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed a trio of congressional resolutions aimed at blocking his administration from selling billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month cited threats from Iran as a reason to approve the $8.1 billion arms sale to the two U.S. allies in the Persian...

More than 80 different types of hummus have been recalled over listeria concerns.

Supermodel Bella Hadid is apologizing after being heavily criticized on Twitter for posting a photo of her shoe right on top of two aircrafts from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia Monday. Her post has drawn attention because Middle East countries consider pointing or placing your shoe towards someone or something disrespectful. In this culture the gesture is seen...

Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Saturday began a long-delayed withdrawal of forces from the port facility in the key city of Hodeida, the group said, following the terms of a December cease-fire aimed at alleviating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the rebels’ Supreme Revolutionary Committee, said the pullout from Hodeida, as well as the two...

The United States has temporarily withdrawn some of its forces from Libya due to “security conditions on the ground,” a top military official said Sunday as a Libyan commander’s forces advanced toward the capital of Tripoli and clashed with rival militias. A small contingent of American troops has been in Libya in recent years, helping local forces combat Islamic State...

Dubai’s government on Sunday forcefully denied a claim by R&B singer R. Kelly that the artist had planned concerts in the sheikhdom after he had sought permission from an Illinois judge to travel there despite facing sexual-abuse charges. In a rare statement, the government’s Dubai Media Office also denied claims by his lawyer in court that Kelly had plans to...

A Chicago judge tabled a decision on whether R. Kelly can fly overseas to perform several concerts as the cash-strapped singer looks to pay legal and other bills as he faces sex-abuse charges.

Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum announced Tuesday that they will go ahead with a $10 billion project to export liquefied natural gas from a plant on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Proving that hard work and a positive attitude pay off, a Fort Worth swimmer who was once homeless is headed to the World Games in Abu Dhabi in March.

Farouk Baakar was on duty as a medic at al-Rashid hospital the day a bleeding man was brought into the emergency room with gunshot wounds and signs of torture. He’d been whipped across the back and hung by his wrists for days. The patient, Baakar learned, had been left for dead by the side of a highway after being held...

Over $6 billion was wiped off global cryptocurrency markets in a day, led by XRP and ethereum as prices of digital coins continued to fall. The entire market capitalization or value of cryptocurrencies had plunged $6.72 billion in 24 hours as of about 11:32 a.m. HK/SIN time on Friday, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com. That came after a sharp sell-off...

Dubai’s flagship airline Emirates is looking at taking over unprofitable neighbor Etihad, according to four people familiar with the matter, in a move that would create the world’s biggest carrier by passenger traffic.

Some of the world’s biggest cities are facing a shortage of drinking water, but an engineering firm in the Middle East is moving to try to fix that by towing icebergs from the Antarctic to the world’s most water-starved regions, NBC News reported. The United Arab Emirates-based firm, National Adviser Bureau, plans to begin a pilot in November, using satellite...

A British newspaper editor in Dubai was found guilty Sunday of bludgeoning his wife to death with a hammer and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Francis Matthew, the former editor of the English-language Gulf News, had faced the possibility of the death penalty in the July 2017 killing of Jane Matthew, his wife of over 30 years. Neither...

Investigators on Monday found the “black box” from a Turkish private jet that crashed in an Iranian mountain range on its way from the United Arab Emirates to Istanbul, killing all 11 people on board that included a Turkish bride-to-be and her bachelorette party. Authorities recovered all the dead from the crash site in the Zagros Mountains outside of the...

Former President George W. Bush said on Thursday that “there’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled” in the 2016 American presidential election. While never mentioning President Donald Trump by name, Bush appeared to be pushing back on Trump’s decisions on immigration, as well as trying to have warmed relations with Russia. “There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled,”...

As the leader of one of the largest cities in the United States, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings meets and greets a lot of people. He now has second thoughts about one of those introductions, and what he would do afterwards.