Militants have stepped up attacks on security forces in northwest Pakistan raising fears of a revival of their insurgency and a return of lawlessness as brighter prospects for peace in Afghanistan herald shifting Islamist alliances. The ethnic Pashtun border region was for years a haven for...

French President Emmanuel Macron called Lebanon’s president on Friday to discuss the need to press on with efforts to form a new government, seeking to give new momentum to an initiative by Paris that aims to pull the Middle East nation out of crisis. France has been leaning on Lebanon’s...

Two Turkish soldiers were killed and another was wounded after Kurdish militants fired rockets at a military base in northern Iraq, Turkey's Defence Ministry said in a statement on Friday. Turkey has regularly attacked Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, both in its mainly Kurdish...

India’s coronavirus cases have jumped by another 96,424 infections in the past 24 hours, showing little signs of slowing down. The Health Ministry on Friday raised the nation’s confirmed total since the pandemic began to more than 5.21 million. It said 1,174 more people died in the past 24...

Though famously skeptical of the United Nations, U.S. President Donald Trump harnessed its collective power to impose crushing sanctions on North Korea in a bid to start talks with Pyongyang, but faces frustration over a similar push on Iran. While the U.N. Security Council was unified on...

Bayern Munich must host Schalke behind closed doors in Friday's opening game of the new Bundesliga season as the defending champions begin their hunt for a ninth straight league title minus playmaker Thiago Alcantara and with Kingsley Coman in quarantine. On Thursday, it was confirmed that...

Britain's health minister said on Friday that the novel coronavirus was accelerating across the country, with hospital admissions doubling every eight days, but refused to say whether or not another national lockdown would be imposed next month. The United Kingdom has reported the fifth...

Hundreds of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv late Thursday against a second nationwide lockdown, the first such move in the world to tackle a renewed spike in coronavirus cases. The country is to re-enter lockdown at 2:00pm on Friday (1100 GMT), hours before Jewish New Year, known as Rosh...

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to issue an executive order allowing him to impose U.S. sanctions on anyone who violates a conventional arms embargo against Iran, four sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the executive...

Bahrain may have won international praise for following in the United Arab Emirates’ footsteps and establishing ties with Israel, but the dramatic move by the close U.S. ally could stir a new wave of opposition at home. While the deal will enable Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim monarchy to win more...

Washington may support exiled former Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan to unseat Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to a top US official. “We’re thinking about it, but we have no desire to engineer the Palestinian leadership,” David Friedman, US envoy to Israel, said in an...

The European Parliament on Thursday urged the EU member states to impose arms embargo on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Yemen war. In the EU arms export report adopted on Thursday, EU lawmakers urge all members of the bloc to “follow the example of Germany,...

France's former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing left hospital on Thursday after receiving treatment for a minor lung infection, his office said. Giscard, 94, had been admitted on Monday to the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, with doctors diagnosing a "slight lung infection", it said....

Lebanon's prime minister-designateMustapha Adib said Thursday he was extending efforts to strike a deal on an emergency cabinet line-up despite missing a French deadline. "I am fully aware that we do not have the luxury of time," he said in a brief statement after meeting President Michel...

Scores protested outside the French embassy in Iraq's capital Baghdad on Thursday to condemn Paris-based magazine Charlie Hebdo's decision to republish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The satirical weekly reprinted the controversial images to mark the start of the trial earlier this month...

Too many doctors and nurses are paying the ultimate price while battling Covid-19, the World Health Organization said Thursday as it launched a charter aiming to boost safety for health workers. The UN health agency said that the pandemic had exposed health workers and their families to...

Swiss exports of gold to the United States all but halted in August while shipments to China and India rose, customs data showed on Thursday, suggesting a big transfer of bullion to New York that followed the cororonavirus outbreak has run its course. The pandemic upended the global gold...

The Emirates airline group unveiled plans Thursday to produce kosher meals in keeping with Jewish dietary rules, two days after the UAE and Israel signed a deal to normalise ties. Dubai-based Emirates, the largest airline in the Middle East, is expected to start flying to the Jewish state...

 The emergencies chief of the World Health Organization says scientific disagreements over COVID-19 interventions - like masks and vaccines - shouldn’t be treated as "some kind of political football," but acknowledged that "it isn’t easy for everyone to be on message all the time."...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Thursday said France was being led by an "incapable" president as he stepped up his personal feud with Emmanuel Macron. Erdogan and Macron have traded insults for months after finding themselves on opposite sides of conflicts ranging from Libya and...