The coronavirus has upended everyday life in the six months since the crisis was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). While our understanding of the new respiratory disease has steadily increased since it was first detected in China last year, what lies ahead over the...

Palestinian leaders won renewed Saudi support for Palestinian statehood on Wednesday, but failed to persuade the Arab League to condemn last month’s normalisation deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. At a video conference of foreign ministers, the Palestinian leadership...

Two Lebanese political parties allied with Hezbollah said on Wednesday they would not be swayed by U.S. sanctions imposed on its members, with the Shi’ite Muslim Amal group saying Washington’s move was like targeting the whole nation. The United States expanded sanctions related to Lebanon...

 Oil futures on Wednesday clawed back some of the losses they sustained in the previous session, but a rebound in COVID-19 cases in some countries undermined hopes for a steady recovery in global demand. Brent crude LCOc1 rose $1.21, or 3%, to $40.99 a barrel by 12:56 p.m. EDT (1656...

Morocco's government on Wednesday extended a medical state of emergency until next month in the face of a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. "Today, the cabinet approved a project for a decree extending until October 10 the duration of the medical state of emergency to combat Covid-19," Prime...

Germany on Wednesday pushed for urgent reform of the EU's migration policies, with its minister for Europe telling AFP it was all the more crucial to act quickly after a fire laid waste to the biggest refugee camp in Greece. "We urgently need a common refugee intake programme among as many...

Waves of soldiers marching in double time open the new documentary by Gianfranco Rosi at the Venice film festival, but the Italian filmmaker's aim is not to depict war, but those caught in the crossfire. Whether mothers mourning sons killed in prison, children drawing in crayon the horrors...

The European Union responded with dismay Wednesday after Britain proposed legislation that could snuff out hopes for a Brexit trade pact, but officials said Brussels would not walk away from talks to avoid a damaging 'no-deal' at the year's end. Britain published a bill that explicitly...

 A Serbian official cast doubt Wednesday on whether Belgrade would relocate its embassy to Jerusalem, saying the decision was "not definite", less than a week after US President Donald Trump announced the move. Israel emerged an unsuspected winner from last week's White House-brokered...

UN-backed experts have found evidence that rebels in Yemen recruited nearly three dozen teenage girls - some said to be survivors of sexual violence - as spies, medics, guards and members of an all-female force, according to a report released Wednesday. The findings came in the third and...

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the controversial normalization deal between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel.  The nomination was submitted by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a four-term member of the Norwegian...

Lebanon's President Michel Aoun has come under fire after it emerged that tea donated by Sri Lanka for victims of the Beirut blast was distributed instead to families of his presidential guards. Critics see it as yet another example of official corruption in a country reeling from the...

Weapons provided by Western powers and Iran to the warring sides in Yemen are fueling the six-year-old conflict, marked by deadly Saudi-led coalition air strikes and Houthi shelling, UN investigators said Wednesday. Coalition air strikes in the past year may amount to war crimes, while the...

Sudanese authorities and the United Nations are rolling out aid to tens of thousands who lost their homes in record Nile floods, but many of those camping out on roadsides and higher ground are despairing of when it will reach them. Sudan's government said it had allocated more than 150...

The warring parties in Libya and their international backers - the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Jordan vs Turkey and Qatar - violated a UN arms embargo on the oil-rich north African country that remains "totally ineffective," UN experts said in a new report. The panel of experts...

Ahmad Manasra was traveling home from a wedding when he spotted a family in distress on the side of a West Bank road. Moments later, the 22-year-old Palestinian was fatally shot while another Palestinian driver was seriously wounded - both by an Israeli soldier in a nearby watchtower. The...

Thousands of migrants fled fires Wednesday that tore through a camp under coronavirus lockdown on Greece's island of Lesbos, while the prime minister called an emergency meeting with ministers though there were no immediate reports of casualties. The fire broke out at the overcrowded...

A bombing in the Afghan capital Wednesday targeted the convoy of the country’s first vice president, killing 10 people and wounding more than a dozen others, including several of the vice president’s bodyguards, the Interior Ministry said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the...

Sergio Barrera Ruiz, a 52-year-old pediatrician from Jujuy in the north of Argentina, sees a local health crisis looming as the coronavirus pandemic ripples out from Buenos Aires, the capital, and grips the country's less well-equipped provinces. Jujuy, a region of some 770,000 people, like...

US President Donald Trump will announce further troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan in the next few days, a senior administration official said Tuesday. The official told reporters traveling with the president to expect an announcement Wednesday on Iraq, and on Afghanistan in the...