A provisional 270 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been secured by the African Union (AU) for distribution across the continent. All of the doses will be used this year, promises current AU head South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. This is on top of 600 million doses already...

On 20 January, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. This will end four years of Donald Trump's foreign policy that has upset allies, angered friends and, sometimes, benefitted foes. However, amending foreign policy in the bitterly divided US will neither be easy...

BEIRUT (AP) — The World Bank approved a $246 million loan to Lebanon to provide emergency cash assistance to nearly 800,000 Lebanese reeling under the country’s compounded economic and health crises. The World Bank said in a statement late Tuesday the loan would also support the development...

(AP) — Indonesian President Joko Widodo received the first shot of a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine Wednesday after the government authorized it for emergency use and began efforts to vaccinate millions of people across the vast archipelago in one of the world’s most populous countries....

Republicans offered only modest reproach when President Donald Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides of a white supremacist rally. They stayed in line when Trump was caught pressuring a foreign leader and later defended his handling of a deadly pandemic. But with a sudden...

The shift to home-working triggered by the coronavirus pandemic looks set to endure long-term, making it vital to protect employees' rights and avoid blurred lines between on-the-clock hours and personal time, the United Nations said Wednesday. Issues facing home workers and their...

More than 80 civilians died in the latest attack in an area of western Ethiopia that has seen recurring grisly violence in recent months, the national human rights commission said Wednesday.  "We've received information that over 80 civilians were killed on January 12 in an area...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has publicly accused Iran's government of allowing the jihadist network al-Qaeda to establish a "new home base" there. "Unlike in Afghanistan, when al-Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, al-Qaeda today is operating under the hard shell of the Iranian regime's...

Iran’s military launched a short-range naval missile drill on Wednesday, Iranian state TV reported, at a time of high tension between arch foes Tehran and Washington. Iran has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East, regarding such weapons as an important deterrent and...

China has recorded the biggest daily jump in COVID cases in more than five months, despite strict measures to curb an outbreak that began in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing, as a team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) investigating the origins of the coronavirus were...

A refugee who fled war in the Middle East claims "life in Hull is the same as in Iraq" due to her 'squalid' living conditions. Wheelchair user Intesar Hassan, 55, and her four children fled war in both Iraq and Syria before being moved to Hull by the United Nations in 2012. But since...

The World Bank approved a US$246 million new project to provide emergency cash transfers and access to social services to approximately 786,000 poor and vulnerable Lebanese reeling under the pressure of Lebanon’s economic and COVID-19 crises, the World Bank reported in a press release. The...

Omar Alghabra was due for a promotion into the Canadian federal ministry, say some of his current and former colleagues.  The Mississauga MP racked up years of experience on tricky issues before his appointment Tuesday to the transport file. “Omar has carried some difficult files...

As the world adjusts to a Twitter without @realdonaldtrump, the next big question is: “Now what?" Major tech platforms, long accused of giving President Donald Trump special treatment not allotted to regular users, have shown him the door in the wake of his incitement of violence by...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ordered Tuesday that women must visit a doctor's office, hospital or clinic in person to obtain an abortion pill during the COVID-19 pandemic, though similar rules for other drugs have been suspended during the public health emergency. Eight days before...

JERUSALEM (AP) — A leading Israeli human rights group has begun describing both Israel and its control of the Palestinian territories as a single "apartheid" regime, using an explosive term that the country's leaders and their supporters vehemently reject. In a report released Tuesday,...

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon will file an urgent complaint with the United Nations against Israel's daily violations of its airspace amid intensifying drone reconnaissance and mock raids around the country, the president's office said Tuesday. President Michel Aoun called for a condemnation of...

President Donald Trump is at the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas trumpeting one of the pillars of his presidency: his campaign against illegal immigration and building a wall along the southern border. It’s Trump’s first time appearing in public since a violent mob of his supporters sieged...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — The interior least tern, a hardy Midwestern bird that survived a craze for its plumage and dam-building that destroyed much of its habitat, has soared off the endangered species list. Federal officials said Tuesday that 35 years of legal protection and habitat...

LONDON (AP) — The European Medicines Agency said Tuesday that AstraZeneca and Oxford University have submitted an application for their COVID-19 vaccine to be licensed across the European Union. The EU regulator said it received a request for the vaccine to be greenlighted under an expedited...