Planes carrying prisoners to be exchanged by Yemen's warring parties took off Friday on the second day of an operation to return about 1,000 men home and help build momentum for a new push to end a catastrophic war. A Saudi-led military coalition, which supports the internationally...

Former Mexican defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who led the country’s army for six years under ex-President Enrique Pe?a Nieto, has been arrested on drug trafficking and money laundering charges at Los Angeles International Airport, U.S. and Mexican sources said Thursday. Two...

At the plush Armani hotel in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower, a rabbi switches on the stoves at what is billed as Dubai's first kosher restaurant. With the ink still fresh on the United Arab Emirates' landmark normalisation accord with Israel, restaurants and...

One of the targets of large cyber attacks on two Iranian government institutions this week was the electronic infrastructure of the country’s ports, an Iranian news agency reported on Friday. The government’s Information Technology Organization on Thursday reported the hacking of two...

 “You have to thank Trump” posters in Hebrew suddenly started appearing on minibuses in Tel Aviv this week, as Republican ads brought the race for the White House onto the streets of Israel. Democrats are also targeting American-Israelis. They arranged a 40% discount with the courier...

Vietnam's 2020 Formula One Grand Prix has been cancelled, organisers said on Friday, but there was no word on whether the race would take place next year. Planned for early April, the Grand Prix in Hanoi was set to be the third race of the season and the first ever held in the communist...

The number of people worldwide who have succumbed to the novel coronavirus exceeded 1.1 million Thursday, according to Worldometer, which compiles COVID-19 data from around the globe.  Its website reported that the death toll from the virus has reached 1,101,420, while the number of...

At the 27th edition of the Bayeux Clavadoes-Normandy Awards that took place on October 9 and 10, Syrian photographer and activist Anas Alkharboutli, from the German agency DPA, won the Young Reporter Trophy for his report entitled “The War in Syria.”  Instituted in 1994 on the annual...

 London, the world’s international financial capital, will enter a tighter COVID-19 lockdown from midnight on Friday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson seeks to tackle a swiftly accelerating second coronavirus wave. The respiratory pandemic, which emerged in China last year and has killed...

The main focus of Middle East peace efforts should be to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, the Saudi foreign minister said on Thursday in a comment suggesting that Israeli-Saudi normalization is unlikely any time soon. “I believe that the focus now needs to be...

The Rome Film Festival opened on Thursday with a screening of the Pixar animated film about a jazzman's dreams, "Soul," despite the lingering coronavirus that has transformed film watching in public. As at the world-famous cinema festival in Venice last month, thermal scanners will measure...

Iraq's finance minister said Thursday there is growing political will to undertake drastic reforms needed for the country to tackle a daunting liquidity crisis, which has pushed Iraq to the brink of collapse. "There is more will now than there was five months ago," Finance Minister Ali...

World number one Novak Djokovic said Thursday he planned to play two more tournaments until the end of the season -- in Vienna and London -- and keep his top ATP ranking. "I'm going to play the Vienna tournament that wasn't originally on my schedule," Djokovic told AFP. He was speaking...

Joe Biden's presidential campaign said Thursday that vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris will suspend in-person events until Monday after two people associated with the campaign tested positive for coronavirus. The campaign said Biden had no exposure, though he and Harris spent several...

Israel has approved the construction of thousands of settlement units in the occupied West Bank. "The Higher Planning Council [HPC] of the Civil Administration approved 4,948 settlement units in a couple dozen plans on 14 and 15 October 2020," Israeli Peace Now, a rights group that...

 Hackers launched large-scale attacks on two Iranian government institutions this week, a senior official said on Thursday, without giving details on the targets or the suspected perpetrators. Some government bodies had since temporarily shut down internet services as a precaution,...

A tweet by President Donald Trump calling for U.S. troops to be home by Christmas has given the insurgent Taliban the upper hand in negotiations, the top Afghanistan peace official told the Financial Times newspaper. Trump posted the tweet last week, hours after his national security...

Warlord Khalifa Haftar’s militia on Thursday fired four rockets aimed at targeting Libyan troops deployed west of Sirte. In a statement, military spokesman Abdul-Hadi Dara said: "Haftar's militia fired four rockets at the Buerat area located west of the city of Sirte, which is a base for...

France and Germany accused Turkey on Thursday of continuing to provoke the European Union with its actions in the eastern Mediterranean, and gave it a week to clarify its positions. Despite an EU summit deal on Oct. 2 aimed at persuading Ankara to stop exploring for natural gas in waters...

Armenia accused Turkey on Thursday of blocking flights carrying emergency aid from using its airspace, and new fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave threatened to pitch the region into a humanitarian crisis. Azerbaijan and Armenia accused each other of violating a ceasefire brokered...