Iran could not produce enough highly-enriched uranium for an atomic bomb without being detected, US National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Tuesday.

Iran could not produce enough highly-enriched unranium for an atomic bomb without being detected, US National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Tuesday.

US President Barack Obama met members of the Arab-American community at the White House on Monday ahead of his trip to Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan, a US spokesman said.

Iranian judges, media officials and a special police Internet monitoring unit linked to the death of a dissident in custody were added Tuesday to the EU's sanctions list against Tehran for grave human rights violations.

A poverty-stricken cigarette vendor set himself on fire in the centre of Tunis on Tuesday, suffering extensive burns but not endangering his life, witnesses and medics said.

Five US troops fighting Islamist insurgents in southern Afghanistan were killed in a helicopter crash in bad weather, the coalition and provincial authorities said Tuesday.

Iranian and Pakistani leaders inaugurated the construction of a much-delayed section of a $7.5 billion gas pipeline linking the two neighbours Monday, defying the threat of US sanctions.

A man set himself on fire Tuesday in central Tunis, an AFP reporter witnessed, hours before the country's lawmakers were to vote on a new government tasked with pulling Tunisia out of a deep political crisis.

A Turkish court has formally charged four Syrians and one Turk with a deadly bomb attack on the volatile border with Syria last month, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

The campaign to succeed the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has officially begun and so has the mudslinging, good and thick.

Israeli restrictions and closures coupled with the worsening fiscal situation of the Palestinian Authority is causing "lasting damage" to the competitiveness of the Palestinian economy, the World Bank warned on Tuesday.

Five members of the NATO-led international force fighting in Afghanistan were killed in a helicopter crash in bad weather in the country's south, the coalition and provincial authorities said Tuesday.

Venezuela was plunged into a bitter election fight to succeed Hugo Chavez, with acting President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles facing off in a flurry of name-calling.

Iranian and Pakistani leaders inaugurated the construction of a much-delayed section of a $7.5 billion gas pipeline linking the two neighbours Monday, defying the threat of US sanctions.

US President Barack Obama will visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Christians believe Jesus was born, when he visits the region next week, Palestinian sources said.

Human rights violations in Iran spiralled in 2012, a United Nations monitor said Monday, spotlighting abuses including repression of freedom of speech, torture and secret executions.

An Egyptian Christian jailed in Libya has been tortured to death in custody, an Egyptian human rights lawyer told AFP in Cairo on Monday, with demonstrators attacking the Libyan embassy in protest.

Two US soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in a suspected insider attack in Afghanistan on Monday, after President Hamid Karzai accused Washington of colluding with the Taliban to justify its presence in the country.

The White House on Monday strongly rejected allegations from Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the United States was colluding with the Taliban to justify the presence of US troops in the country.

The king of Bahrain named his son Crown Prince Salman, a reputed moderate, as deputy premier, on Monday, as a promised national dialogue stalled between the Gulf state's Sunni regime and its Shiite majority.