Women in Somalia's third-largest city, Baidoa, have been ordered to wear Islamic dress starting this week or face jail time, according to a resident and Somali media reports. The order -- issued last week by Al-Shabaab, the radical Islamist militia that controls the city -- also warns business owners to close their shops during daily prayers, or they will be temporarily shut down, a local journalist said. The militia has ordered women to cover their bodies and heads from view, ...

A U.S. journalist in Iran was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage, her father, lawyer and news reports said Saturday -- a sentence that prompted denunciation from the United States. Iranian media, including an Iranian judiciary source quoted Saturday by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency, confirmed the sentence of Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American from North Dakota. "I am deeply disappointed by the reported sentencing of Roxana Saberi by the Iranian judiciary," U.S. Secretary of State ...

Don Henley, a founding member of "The Eagles," is suing a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, claiming the candidate is misusing two of his popular songs. "Today our nation is one of the strongest in the region and a great part of the world," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, according to Mehr. "And no country dares to threaten it." Ahmadinejad delivered the speech during a ceremony at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, Mehr said. ...

Voting has begun in Indonesia's parliamentary elections, with 38 parties vying for one of 700 parliamentary seats. The outcome of the election will determine which parties can field presidential candidates for the July election. Damin Sada, from the Islamic-based United Development Party, is one from among 12,000 election candidates. Smiling broadly, flanked by a photo illustration of U.S. President Barack Obama and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- his hands clasped over theirs -- he says he is ...

A devastating suicide blast struck a mosque in the strife-torn tribal region of Pakistan Friday, killing at least 51 people and wounding more than 100 others, local officials said. The casualty toll was expected to rise in the blast, which occurred near the Afghanistan border in the Bigiari area of Jamrod sub-division in Khyber Agency. It's the latest in a long line of attacks in the region, some of them staged on days of political importance in the volatile Afghan ...

Iran will send an envoy to a U.S.-backed international conference on Afghanistan, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will represent the United States at the United Nations meeting Tuesday in The Hague, the State Department said earlier. It is not clear who Iran will send to the conference. Obama made an overture to Iran last week in a video address marking the Persian new year holiday of Nowruz. "My administration is now committed to ...

The threat from terrorists using chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons is growing, Britain said Tuesday, warning advances in technology will enable extremists to conduct more lethal attacks in the future. The predictions came as Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government's laid out its anti-terrorism policies and strategy in a document containing previously-classified information. In it the government also warned that although the al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden, was likely to fragment in coming years, the group's ideology will ...

Three decades after Iran's upheaval established Islamic clerical rule for the first time in 14 centuries, a quieter and more profound revolution is transforming the Muslim world. Dalia Ziada is a part of it. When Ziada was 8, her mother told her to don a white party dress for a surprise celebration. It turned out to be a painful circumcision. But Ziada decided to fight back. The young Egyptian spent years arguing with her father and uncles against the ...

President Barack Obama reached out to Iran on Friday -- the start of the Iranian New Year -- in a video message offering "the promise of a new beginning" that is "grounded in mutual respect." The message is a dramatic shift in tone from that of the Bush administration, which included Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, in an "axis of evil." It also echoes Obama's inaugural speech, in which he said to the Muslim world, "we seek a ...

Iran is to send a female skier to the Winter Olympics for the first time at next year's Games in Vancouver, Canada, the head of the Islamic Republic's ski federation told state media Monday. The chosen competitor will ski in "full Islamic dress," Iran's National News Agency reported. Three women Fatemeh Kiadarbandsari, Mitra Kalhor and Marjan Kalhor are vying for the place on the national team alongside three male skiers, said Iranian Ski Federation head Isa Saveh-Shemshaki. Trials for the ...