FIFA President Gianni Infantino has defended the use of video replays despite a shaky debut for the new system at the Club World Cup. The replay system allows referees to halt games to review footage of "game-changing decisions", but its introduction has had a mixed reaction from players and...

Gunmen shot dead five female airport workers and their driver in southern Afghanistan Saturday, underlining the threat to employed women in the country. The women were in a van driving to the airport in the southern Kandahar province when at least three gunmen on motorcycles opened fire at...

Several people were wounded on Saturday in a car bombing close to a public bus in the central Turkish city of Kayseri, television reports said. Initial television pictures showed that the bus had been reduced to a smouldering wreck by the impact of the blast. The Dogan news agency said...

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Friday his administration would build "safe zones" to try to help civilians trapped in Syria's bloody conflict, an idea that President Barack Obama said would be too hard to enforce. Trump and Obama spoke separately of the conflict after efforts to...

President Barack Obama declared Friday that Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, Iran and Russia are responsible for the carnage in Aleppo and argued there was nothing Washington could have done to stop the war, short of a military takeover of Syria. And he warned Assad, who has been engaged in...

(The wall Street Journal)- Russian special-operations forces have played a pivotal part in the Syrian ground offensive to retake Aleppo, a role shielded by secrecy about their operations there. In the wake of Russia’s punishing aerial bombardment, Russian special forces have been operating...

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday urged Syrian parties to resume the evacuation of civilians from Aleppo after operations were suspended in the battered city. "Aleppo is now a synonym for hell," Ban said in his final news conference before he steps down as U.N. chief on Dec. 31....

Iran's foreign ministry has summoned the British envoy in Tehran after the U.K. accused Iran of playing a role in the "suffering" of the people of Syria's Aleppo. The semi-official Tasnim news agency is reporting that the foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, says Iran's foreign...

Tunisia's prime minister said Friday that his government would seek to amend a controversial law that allows men who rape underage girls to avoid punishment by marrying their victims. Youssef Chahed's comments come two weeks after a Tunisian court approved the marriage of a 13-year-old girl...

The takeover of eastern Aleppo by Syrian government forces creates the conditions for the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry official Sergei Rudskoi said Friday. Rudskoi added that all civilians and most rebel fighters had left formerly rebel-controlled...

The U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS Friday it destroyed 14 tanks, an air defense artillery system and other weaponry near the Syrian city of Palmrya after ISIS seized the city from Syrian and Russian forces this month. The strikes, which the military said in a statement took place on...

(The Daily Star)- Demonstrators in north Lebanon Friday called for the expulsion of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian ambassadors to the country over the developments in the Syrian city of Aleppo, while mosques in the south performed absentee funeral prayers for those who were killed in the...

Saudi police arrested a Syrian resident in Riyadh after he posted a photo of himself Facebook praising the recapture of his home city of Aleppo by government forces, according to a report in al-Riyadh newspaper Friday. A photo published with the report showed a man with his hand raised and...

German prosecutors said Friday they were investigating a case in which a 12-year-old boy allegedly tried to detonate a home-made nail bomb at a Christmas market. News weekly Focus first reported the case, saying a German-Iraqi child had plotted the attack, possibly after being radicalized by...

ISIS fighters have stepped up counterattacks on Iraqi forces in Mosul amid bad weather as the U.S.-backed offensive to capture their last major city stronghold in Iraq enters its third month. With cloudy skies hampering coalition air surveillance, the militants carried out attacks in three...

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman says Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a 'butcher' who should be thrown out of the country along with his Iranian allies. "In my personal opinion, Assad is a butcher who massacred and murdered people," Lieberman told a conference of Jews from the...

If ISIS group is to be defeated and prevented from reappearing under some new guise, the root causes behind its birth and growth must be addressed, American experts say. In the face of an uprising that has catalyzed and channeled anger, frustrations and resentments of a significant part of...

(The Daily Star)- “Keep your headphones in so we can communicate,” Jesse Rosenfeld shouted into the microphone. “If people decide they hate the press we’re going to have to get the f---k out of here.” “Freelancer on the Front Lines,” a new documentary by Santiago Bertolino released at the...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Kremlin’s bombing campaign in Syria last year to back up leader Bashar Assad, the regime’s forces were being pushed back. Now Damascus is celebrating its biggest victory in over five years of war after recapturing control of the rebel...

Sanctions against Iran were officially extended for another decade Thursday, even though President Obama did not sign the legislation, a symbolic move intended to show the White House’s disapproval of the bill. The sanctions renewal, which passed Congress with enough votes to be veto-proof,...