MIDEAST: Bombing Stalls Cleanup of Massive Oil Spill

As Israeli bombs continue to fall from the skies across Lebanon, destroying homes, parks, roads, bridges, forests, hospitals and power stations, scientists say the enormous amount of toxic waste unleashed by the attack will continue to affect human lives and the environment long after the fighting is over.

MIDEAST: Was Israel’s Aim to Clear Path for US War on Iran?

Israel has argued that the war against Hezbollah's rocket arsenal was a defensive response to the Shiite organisation's threat to Israeli security, but the evidence points to a much more ambitious objective - the weakening of Iran's deterrent to an attack on its nuclear sites.

MIDEAST: Israel’s Military Invincibility Dented by Hezbollah

Israel's phenomenal victories against collective Arab armies in 1967 and later against Egypt in 1973 firmly established the Jewish state's legendary military superiority in the Middle East.

MIDEAST: Christians Caught in Political Crossfire

Many Lebanese Christians say they feel caught in the middle of a war in which they have a lot to lose and little to gain.

MIDEAST: Arab League Also Steps In

Many Lebanese are welcoming a show of unity by Arab ministers who decided in Beirut Monday to send a delegation to the United Nations to represent Lebanon's interests in ending the current conflict.

POLITICS: Activists Recall Hiroshima as Nuclear Worries Grow

As the war between Israel and Lebanon approaches the one-month mark and the U.S. continues to pursue expansion of its nuclear arsenal, people around the world will stop to remember Aug. 7, 1945.

MIDEAST: Hezbollah Rides a New Popularity

As the war in Lebanon approaches the one-month mark, and amid the destruction of much of Lebanon, Hezbollah appears to be gaining strength within the country and around the Arab world.

MIDEAST: Staying Put Amid the Bombing

Residents of south Lebanon's biggest city and the refugees who have joined them are staying put despite warnings from Israel that it plans to bomb "Hezbollah rocket launching sites" in Sidon, according to the city's mayor.

POLITICS: OIC Meet Exposes Muslim World’s Rifts

Notwithstanding the strongly worded demands for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and intervention by the United Nations, the emergency session of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the Malaysian capital only managed to expose a lack of unity within the Muslim world.

MIDEAST: Children Begin to Unlearn Some Lessons

"Rockets landed on our house and destroyed it totally, so many people were injured," says nine-year-old Issara. Her two brothers, four-year-old Hussein and five-year-old Mahmoud, listen carefully. So does Ola Attaya, 31, a psychologist heading a pilot project to help traumatised children.

MIDEAST: A City Lives On With Its Ill-Fated Charm

The poster on the corniche near the American University campus in Beirut has become justly well known. It shows a Muslim woman in full black abaya walking next to a slender woman in a bikini. Together, they're the face of Beirut.

MIDEAST: U.S. Watches Dreams of Transformation Dissolve

Entering the fourth week of war between Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and Israel, the George W. Bush administration's ambitions to transform the Arab Middle East into a pro-Western, more democratic region are fading fast.

MIDEAST: War Easier to Start Than Stop

Israeli commandos snatching Hezbollah operatives deep inside Lebanon. Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah fighters in villages along the Lebanese-Israel border. Thousands of troops streaming into south Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets again raining down by the dozens on towns in northern Israel. Fighter planes renewing their bombardment of targets inside Lebanon.

MIDEAST: Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of War Crimes

In systematically failing to distinguish between Hezbollah fighters and civilian population in its three-and-a-half-week-old military campaign in Lebanon, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have committed war crimes, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch Wednesday.

MIDEAST: U.S. to Supply Food with One Hand, Arms with Other

As Israel's bombing of Lebanon continues unabated into its fourth consecutive week, the United States says it stands ready to provide food, medicine and humanitarian assistance to the thousands of internally displaced Lebanese caught in the crossfire.

POLITICS-INDIA: Hamstrung on Israel by Nuclear Deal With US

A major rift has opened up between the Indian government and domestic public opinion over Israel's recent military actions in the Gaza Strip and its invasion of Lebanon which has led to hundreds of civilian deaths over three weeks..

MIDEAST: Lebanese Red Cross Repeatedly Targeted

Israeli warplanes are attacking the Lebanese Red Cross repeatedly, members of the medical aid group say.

MIDEAST: ‘No Hezbollah Rockets Fired from Qana’

Red Cross workers and residents of Qana, where Israeli bombing killed at least 60 civilians, have told IPS that no Hezbollah rockets were launched from the city before the Israeli air strike.

MIDEAST: U.N. Inaction on Lebanon Under Heavy Fire

As the Israelis continue to defy the international community and refuse to agree to a ceasefire in the three-week old bombing of Lebanon, a hamstrung United Nations has come under heavy fire for merely watching the death and destruction from the sidelines.

MIDEAST: Republican Realists Call for Major Course Change

Some of the Republican Party's most venerable foreign policy strategists are calling urgently for a major course change in U.S. policy in the Middle East, but neither the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush nor Republicans in Congress appear inclined to pay much heed.

POLITICS: Defiant Iran Shrugs Off Security Council Ultimatum

Iran accused the United States and its allies on Monday of trying to use the United Nations Security Council as a cover to justify their "threats of resorting to force" against the Islamic Republic.