Syria began requiring visas for Iraqis entering the country Monday, hoping to stem the flow of refugees fleeing violence in their homeland, a Syrian official said.

An attack by the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that claimed 13 lives on Saturday was the last throes of terrorism, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan said in a statement on Sunday.

In the framework of the UN General Assembly’s 62nd session in New York, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad agreed to build a railroad connecting Iran and Turkey.

  Syria’s State Security Court on Sunday convicted two Syrians and a Jordanian of belonging to extremist Islamic groups and sentenced them to prison, a local human rights group said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban militants hanged a teenager in southern Afghanistan because he had U.S. money in his pocket, and they stuffed five $1 bills in his mouth as a warning to others not to use dollars, police said Monday. Taliban militants elsewhere killed eight police.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops using airstrikes killed more than 20 suspected militants in southern Afghanistan on Monday, the coalition said, days after President Hamid Karzai renewed his offer to hold peace talks with the Taliban.

A helicopter of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) made an emergency landing in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province Sunday, an ISAF statement said.

TEHRAN – Iran Small Industries and Industrial Parks Organization (ISIPO) and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Commerce and Industries signed an industrial memorandum in Mashhad, southeastern Iran, on Sunday.

KABUL (AFP) – Three Afghan civilians were killed in crossfire between Taliban and soldiers in Afghanistan that also left several rebels dead, while two police died trying to defuse a large bomb Sunday, officials said.

Iran on Sunday dismissed a recent approval by the US House of Representatives to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group, and said that the word terrorist is a proper title for the military and security forces of the United States.