Pakistan's defence minister has threatened to retaliate in kind to any Israeli nuclear strike after apparently being tricked by a fake news site into a confrontation on social media. Khawaja Asif was responding to an invented story published on the website AWDNews and headlined: "Israeli...

Those in the small Turkish town of Soke who knew Mevlut Altintas, the smartly dressed, clean-shaven young man who shot dead Russia's ambassador this week, recall a lonely taciturn boy twice rejected by university before leaving home and joining the police. Altintas was 22 when he shot Andrei...

Activists from across Europe are set Monday to begin a nearly 3,000-kilometer trek from Berlin to war-battered Aleppo, via Turkey, with the goal of promoting immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to all besieged areas in Syria. Polish blogger and journalist Anna Alboth called on...

"Save us before we die from the cold," read the email in Father Zoltan Nemeth's inbox. It was an appeal that this Hungarian priest could not ignore. The SOS was sent by an asylum-seeker, one of 14 relocated from a refugee camp earmarked for closure near Budapest to what they say are freezing...

At least 30 civilians were killed and many others were wounded on Sunday after ISIS launched an attack in the Syrian town of al-Bab to prevent people from fleeing, the Turkish military said in a statement on Monday. Syrian rebels supported by Turkish troops have laid siege to the ISIS-held...

China stocks began 2016's final week on a bearish note, as lower commodity prices hurt raw material and energy shares. Hong Kong markets were closed on Monday for a holiday. The CSI300 index was down 0.6 percent, to 3,286.47 points, at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai...

British singer George Michael, who became one of the pop idols of the 1980s with Wham! and then forged a career as a successful solo artist with sometimes sexually provocative lyrics, died at his home in England on Sunday. He was 53. In the mid-1980s, “Wham! was one of the most successful pop...

An unexploded British bomb from World War Two forced 54,000 people out of their homes in Germany on Christmas Day, the country's biggest such evacuation since the end of hostilities. The huge operation on Sunday in the southern city of Augsburg took 11 hours, involved 900 police officers and...

A Frenchwoman who runs an organisation for malnourished children has been kidnapped in Mali's restive north, France's foreign ministry confirmed on Sunday, as French troops joined in the search for the aid worker. Sophie Petronin was abducted in the city of Gao on Saturday, the ministry...

This is the third Christmas that Staff Sergeant Magdiel Asencio is spending in Iraq. For Sergeant First Class Noel Alvarado, it is number four. And so it is with many U.S. troops stationed less than a hour's drive from the front line with Islamic State. Few thought they would be back nearly...

 A Russian military plane heading to Syria crashed into the Black Sea on Sunday, with no sign of survivors among the 92 on board, including Red Army Choir members on their way to celebrate the New Year with troops. The Tu-154 plane went down shortly after taking off from the southern...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin following the tragic Russian plane crash that killed 92 people, presidential sources said Sunday. Erdogan offered his condolences to Putin over Sunday’s deadly Russian plane crash in the Black Sea, according...

Israel summoned the ambassadors of 10 nations to Jerusalem to reprimand them on Sunday and had more harsh words for the Obama administration over a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an end to settlement-building. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put his personal imprint on the show...

Al Shabaab Islamist militants shot dead a military prosecutor in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region Sunday, witnesses and officials said, the type of targeted killing that Al Qaeda-allied gunmen frequently commit throughout Somalia. Al Shabaab's insurgency aims to drive out African...

At least 20 people were killed and scores injured in an airstrike in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul on Sunday. A warplane struck a marketplace in al-Baaj, 140 kilometers west of Mosul, Iraqi lawmaker Zahed al-Khatoni told Anadolu Agency.  He said the death toll is expected to rise as...

Pope Francis urged Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus by thinking about the plight of today's children, bemoaning how some must escape bombs or flee in migrant boats and how others are prevented from being born at all. Francis celebrated a somber Christmas Eve Mass in a packed St....

A fire erupted in a fuel tank at Oil Refineries Ltd in Haifa on Sunday, sending thick black smoke into the sky above the northern Israeli port city. "We have a fuel tank on fire. The level of the fuel in it is relatively low, about a metre (three feet) high," Uri Chibotero, a Haifa Fire...

Indonesian police Sunday shot dead two terror suspects and arrested two more, only days after foiling separate plans by an ISIS-linked group for a Christmas-time suicide bombing near the capital. The pair were fatally shot at a house in Purwakarta 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of the...

China's first aircraft carrier will carry out drills in the Western Pacific, in what the navy called part of routine exercises, amid renewed tension over self-ruled Taiwan that Beijing claims as its own. The navy said in a statement late Saturday the Liaoning, along with its accompanying...

Israel was defiant Sunday over a U.N. vote demanding it halt settlements in Palestinian territory, after lashing out at U.S. President Barack Obama over what it called the "shameful" resolution. The Security Council passed the measure Friday after the United States abstained, enabling the...