Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said he will not run in presidential elections he has called for in January, saying he had had enough after years of frustration fighting for an independent homeland.

A healthy suspicion of the subprime market appears to have paid off, as Lebanese banks flourish in the face of the global economic crisis.

After resigning from a 24-year government career, U.S. diplomatist Peter Galbraith worked as a contract-based adviser to leaders in Iraq's Kurdish community, while arguing passionately in public media that Iraq's Kurds should be given maximum independence from Baghdad, including full control over any new sources of oil.

All summer the Lebanese have been waiting for a new cabinet of ministers to emerge, with no results yet.

An increasingly isolated and unpopular Palestinian Authority (PA) has again made a 180-degree turn in the Goldstone Report fiasco as it tries to fend off mounting criticism from all and sundry, including its own organization.

As the conflict between government forces and Houthi fighters grinds on in the mountains of Saada in northern Yemen, thousands of Yemeni civilians, many of them children, are being forced from their homes by the fighting.