Middle East

The Palestinian Authority has refused since May to register Palestinian births with Israel, so the infants are blocked from leaving the country, as one Palestinian American family recently learned.

Shamsia Alizada, the daughter of a coal miner, has received the highest test score in Afghanistan's university admissions exam. She will attend medical school.

A map of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths around the world. The respiratory disease has spread rapidly across six continents and has killed thousands of people.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with correspondent Susanne Koelbl of Der Spiegel about her book, Behind the Kingdom's Veil: Inside the New Saudi Arabia Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Scientists discovered 120,000-year-old human footprints in Saudi Arabia along with those of horses and elephants — hinting the region was once more hospitable to people moving out of Africa.

The shofar is a hallmark of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. The pandemic means there will be more and smaller prayer gatherings this year, so some cities have offered free shofar-blowing courses.

To help people celebrate a socially distanced Jewish New Year, there are free courses in Israel teaching how to blow the shofar — the ritual ram or antelope horn.

The agreements bring "a pivot in history," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before a signing ceremony at the White House.

The White House describes the deals being signed by two Gulf Arab states with Israel as a sign of a changing Middle East. But they're not of "the deal of the century" the U.S. was orignally seeking.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain will establish diplomatic relations in a formal signing at the White House on Tuesday.

In California, President Trump is pressed on climate change. Gulf Coast communities brace for Hurricane Sally. And, Israel is set to sign deals opening formal relations with two Arab nations.

Peace between Bahrain and Israel might start off slowly. But some in this small Arab country have doubts, and neighboring Saudi Arabia is still holding off normalizing ties with Israel.