Iran

Last week, authorities shut down one of the few major reformist newspapers and increased pressure on students to end their political activities.

Iraq announced that it would launch a second round of bids to license international oil companies to develop 11 oil and gas fields, some of which are shared with Iran and Kuwait.

Faced with falling oil prices and a weakening economy, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed what would be a major change of course for the oil-producing country.

A prominent Iranian-Canadian blogger has been detained and his case is being investigated, Iran’s judiciary said on Tuesday.

Authorities stormed the offices of Shirin Ebadi, the country’s most prominent human rights activist and a Nobel Prize winner, seizing computers and documents.

Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state offer challenges that Israel’s leaders and public find difficult to counter.

The Sunni militant group to which the suicide bomber was affiliated had attacked Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guards but not through suicide bombings.