Middle East

"The conflict that has torn Syria apart can be traced, in part, to a record drought worsened by global warming, a new study says."

"Millions of litres of oil gushing out of a breached pipeline flooded a desert nature reserve in Israel overnight, causing one of the country’s worst environmental disasters, officials and media said."

"Islamic State's assault on dams and water systems threatens Iraq's supply, which was already squeezed by dams in Turkey and Iran."

"GENEVA -- U.N.-mandated human rights investigators said Wednesday that they believed the Syrian government dropped the chemical agent chlorine on civilian areas on eight different occasions in April."

"Kurdish and Iraqi forces seized control of Iraq’s largest dam from Islamic State militants as the U.S. deployed air power that helped reverse some gains made by the Sunni-Muslim insurgents in the north."

"BAGHDAD — The crisis gripping Iraq escalated rapidly on Thursday with a re-energized Islamic State in Iraq and Syria storming new towns in the north and seizing a strategic dam as Iraq’s most formidable military force, the Kurdish pesh merga, was routed in the face of the onslaught."

"A Libya oil depot fire spread uncontrolled Monday, after the oil depot was caught in the middle of militias battling for control of an airfield. The Libya oil depot fire had spread to a second depot by Monday afternoon, according to the government."

"Iraq's government has lost control of a former chemical weapons facility to 'armed terrorist groups' and is unable to fulfill its international obligations to destroy toxins kept there, the country's U.N. envoy told the United Nations."

"Security analysts in London and Baghdad say control of rivers and dams has become a major tactical weapon for ISIS""

"Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company is planning to add more solar power, a move to limit domestic fossil-fuel consumption in the world’s biggest exporter of crude."