Lewis Hamilton seeks to equal Michael Schumacher's record 91 Formula One wins at the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi on Sunday despite fears over a potential coronavirus fall-out from allowing 30,000 fans to attend. The six-time world champion is one win away from what once was believed to be...

Standing in the gutted ruins of her bar destroyed by Beirut's massive port blast, Lebanese entrepreneur Gizelle Hassoun said she hopes crowdfunding can help save her business from the rubble. "This place was my life," the 46-year-old said, standing on top of piles of broken shutters and...

North Korean soldiers shot dead a suspected South Korean defector at sea and burned his body as a coronavirus precaution after he was interrogated in the water over several hours, Seoul military officials said Thursday. It is the first killing of a Southern citizen by North Korean forces...

President Donald Trump again declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the Nov. 3 presidential election. "We’re going to have to see what happens," Trump said Wednesday at a news conference, responding to a question about whether he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of...

Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar expects to reach an agreement soon with the OPEC group over increasing Iraq's crude oil exports, state news agency INA cited him as saying Thursday. OPEC's second-biggest producer, Iraq has failed in the past to fully comply with OPEC oil output...

An estimated 14.6 million new internal displacements have been recorded across 127 countries and territories in first half of 2020, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said Wednesday. “The staggering figures recorded in the first six months of the year are testament to the...

A group of Saudi dissidents, most of them in exile, Wednesday announced the formation of a party to push for political reform in Saudi Arabia in defiance of de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has moved to crush any dissent. The world's top oil exporter and US ally is an...

Arab leaders voiced fears Wednesday before the United Nations of new conflict in the region as tensions soar between Iran and the United States. The annual extravaganza of international diplomacy at the UN General Assembly has been turned into a virtual affair this year, with leaders...

Luis Suarez left his last Barcelona training session in tears on Wednesday as he prepares for a move to La Liga rivals Atletico Madrid. Spanish television channel Gol showed the Uruguayan striker wiping away tears with his sleeve as he drove off after saying his last goodbyes. Suarez...

The US ambassador to Turkey said Wednesday companies will consider abandoning its market if it fails to fully meet debt payments to American pharmaceutical firms, and he criticised a new Turkish law clamping down on big social media sites. Addressing a trade conference streamed online,...

Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Wednesday called for a comprehensive solution on Iran, disarming its affiliate Hezbollah in Lebanon, and expressed support for US efforts to start talks between Israel and the Palestinians during his first address to the United Nations General Assembly....

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard force has managed to fly a surveillance drone over the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier which last week transited through the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian news agency said Wednesday. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is considered close to the...

Two oil-rich Arab Gulf states suffered severe economic blows Wednesday, as a major credit agency downgraded Kuwait for the first time and the United Arab Emirates acknowledged its economy would contract to a level last seen in 2009. The agency, Moody’s Investors Service, cut Kuwait’s debt...

The bomb threat for Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower turned out to be a false alarm, a police official told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.  The official, who asked not to be named, said the historic landmark of French capital reopened for visitors under security measures.  Eiffel...

Johnson & Johnson is beginning a huge final study to try to prove if a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine can protect against the virus. The study starting Wednesday will be one of the world's largest coronavirus vaccine studies so far, testing the shot in 60,000 volunteers in the U.S., South...

Iraqi doctor Tariq Al-Sheibani remembers little else beyond cowering on the ground as a dozen relatives of a patient, who had just died of COVID-19, beat him unconscious. About two hours later the 47-year-old director of Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Najaf woke up in a different...

Four mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group were killed when a helicopter carrying ammunition crashed in central Libya, the Libyan army said on Wednesday. "A helicopter carrying Russian mercenaries and ammunition fell in the town of Sukna, in the city of Al-Jufrah,” military spokesman...

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus was sworn in for a new term Wednesday in an inauguration denounced as illegitimate by the opposition, which called for more protests against his 26-year rule. The sudden ceremony, which would normally be publicised as a major state occasion but was...

The European Union's executive proposed Wednesday overhauling the bloc's broken migration and asylum rules, seeking to end years of feuds and bitterness over the many people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. The most contentious element would impose a legal...

 France backed on Wednesday a proposal made by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to end the deadlock preventing the formation of a cabinet to lead the nation out of its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. Paris has been pressing Lebanese politicians to form a government quickly...