When an 18-year-old Saudi asylum seeker arrived in Bangkok she faced immediate deportation -- but instead she is in the hands of the UN refugee agency, her social media savvy galvanising a global campaign that caught the Thai government flat-footed. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun fled the...

Iran will boost trade with India as the European Union struggles to find a way to circumvent a fresh US embargo on Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Tuesday. Brussels is working on a payment mechanism to keep financial transactions flowing with Iran, after the US ditched...

Four-time champion David Ferrer cruised through the opening round of the Auckland Classic Tuesday but South Korea's Chung Hyeon suffered a stunning loss to local underdog Rubin "Jose" Statham. Ferrer, 36, has retired from Grand Slams but the former world number three is making a few...

Some of the 49 migrants stranded off the coast of Malta are refusing food, one of the groups running the boats that rescued them reported Monday. "On board of #SeaWatch we are reporting episodes of people refusing food," Sea-Watch International tweeted Monday. "We fear that...

  Amazon overtook Microsoft to become the biggest company by market capitalization. Amazon for the first time closed out Monday's session as the world's biggest company by market capitalization, overtaking Microsoft and other fellow tech behemoths. The online sales...

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe on Monday announced plans to ban participation in unauthorised demonstrations as the government scrambles to try to end weeks of violent “Yellow Vest” protests. Eight weeks into an anti-government rebellion marked by weekly clashes in Paris...

 World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, who was at odds with the Trump administration's policies on climate change, will resign effective Feb. 1, more than three years ahead of his term's expiration, the multilateral lender said Monday. Kim, 59, a physician and public health...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will deliver a "dramatic announcement" set to coincide with the evening news broadcast. Netanyahu said in statement on Twitter Monday that he would broadcast a "special announcement to the press." The embattled prime minister's...

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) officials will return to Moscow on Jan. 9 to retrieve laboratory data it required, Russia's minister of sport Pavel Kolobkov said Monday. Access to the lab and data before the end of 2018 was a condition of WADA's September decision to reinstate the...

The Israeli army said Monday it had carried out further air raids against Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip in response to a rocket being fired over its border. The Israeli air defense system intercepted the rocket which was fired overnight from the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, the army...

A Thai court rejected an attempt to block the deportation of a Saudi woman who made a desperate plea for asylum after arriving at Bangkok airport, a lawyer said Monday. "They dismissed the request... They said we do not have enough evidence," said human rights lawyer Nadthasiri Bergman,...

The Palestinian Authority said Sunday it was withdrawing staff from the Rafah border post with Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip to protest against "brutal practices" by rival faction Hamas. "This decision comes in the light of recent developments and brutal practices of the de facto...

The death toll from the powerful storm Usman that triggered landslides and flash flood in the Philippines has climbed to 126, Chinese official news agency reported on Sunday. Xinhua cited the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) as saying that 26 people...

U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman said on Sunday that his administration's plan for peace in the Middle East would be delayed.   In statements he gave during a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, to Israel, Friedman said the rollout...

Egypt’s president Sisi will inaugurate the country’s biggest cathedral on Coptic Christmas Eve Sunday, a day after a deadly bomb blast near a church in a country where jihadists have repeatedly targeted Christians. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday’s explosion...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez began her term as the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress with a bang this week by proposing to tax the ultra-rich at 60 or 70 percent. The daughter of working-class parents, the 29-year-old New Yorker was following up on her campaign promise....

An 18-year-old Saudi woman seeking asylum was denied entry to Thailand and held in Bangkok's airport, a Thai official said Sunday. Rahaf Mohammad M. Alqunun "ran away from her family to avoid marriage and she is concerned she may be in trouble returning to Saudi Arabia," Thailand's...

Egypt's Interior Ministry said a policeman was killed as he was trying to defuse an explosive device near a church in a residential Cairo district. The ministry said the blast late Saturday also wounded the commander of the bomb squad and another policeman. The device was in a suitcase...

The Taliban will not attend planned peace talks with the United States in Saudi Arabia this month, and want to shift the venue to Qatar, Taliban officials said Sunday, seeking to fend off Riyadh's push to include the Afghan government in talks. The upcoming negotiations, the fourth in a...

Firebrand Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s parliamentary bloc has reiterated rejection of the presence of U.S. troops in Iraqi capital Baghdad. On Saturday, images of Brig. Gen. Austin Renforth, Director of Joint Operations-Iraq for the Combined Joint Task Force, while touring the...