Israel has listed an El Al flight taking off Monday for Abu Dhabi, which would be Israel's first commercial passenger flight to the United Arab Emirates after the two countries agreed to a US-brokered deal to normalize relations. The website of the Israel Airports Authority listed the...

Home sales are booming. Stocks are setting record highs. Industrial production is clambering out of the ditch it fell into early this year. And yet the US economy is nowhere close to regaining the health it achieved, with low unemployment, free-spending consumers and booming travel, before...

Venezuelan security forces and authorities under President Nicolas Maduro have used the coronavirus as an excuse to crack down on dissenting voices on social media and even in private messages, Human Rights Watch reported Friday. The New York-based rights group said Venezuelan authorities...

South Korea decided Friday to tighten coronavirus curbs further in the greater Seoul area as it seeks to contain growing clusters in the region. The country largely overcame an early coronavirus outbreak with extensive tracing and testing, but is now battling several outbreaks mostly linked...

Flood waters in Sudan have reached the highest levels on record, killing dozens of people, destroying thousands of homes and encroaching on some neighbourhoods of the capital Khartoum. The flooding comes despite Ethiopia starting to fill the reservoir behind a giant new dam upstream on the...

Anti-racism protesters were planning to flood the streets of the US capital on Friday, after a white officer's shooting of African American Jacob Blake rekindled outrage over police violence and sparked a boycott movement in the sports world. Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected...

Japan's longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, intends to leave office because of declining health, according to reports Friday by national broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media.  In a country once known for its short-tenured prime ministers, Abe's departure would mark the end...

Israeli tanks and warplanes bombed Hamas positions in Gaza Friday and the Islamists retaliated with rockets as a three-week-old flare-up showed no let-up despite international mediation efforts. Warning sirens sounded before dawn in Israeli communities near the border as the pre-dawn air...

Nearly 5,800 people suspected of killing health workers, selling defective medical equipment and lying about their travel history have been arrested in China for epidemic-related crimes since January, the state prosecutor's office said. One case involved a shopper who beat another customer...

The UN Security Council is voting on a resolution that would extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon for a year but reduce its troop ceiling from 15,000 to 13,000 in response to US pressure. The French-drafted resolution also makes another concession to the...

US President Donald Trump will announce on Thursday a deal for 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests as he eyes a return to normal life ahead of November's elections, White House officials told AFP. The purchase from Abbott Laboratories is part of a $750 million deal with the company, a senior...

 Creditors of Iran have filed a suit in a New York court seeking to require Deutsche Boerse's Clearstream unit to surrender assets that allegedly belong to the country's central bank, the German stock exchange operator said Thursday. Deutsche Boerse said in a statement the complaint...

The World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated its advice on Thursday that resources permitting, people exposed to the novel coronavirus should be tested even if they do not show immediate symptoms of infection. The comments come after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

France's prime minister on Thursday laid out a plan for the country's recovery from the novel coronavirus pandemic.  Promising a "strong and rapid response" during the press conference at the prime ministerial residence, Jean Castex detailed the €100 billion ($118 billion) recovery...

The death toll from two days of heavy flooding in northern and eastern Afghanistan rose to at least 150 Thursday, with scores more injured as rescue crews searched for survivors beneath the mud and rubble of collapsed houses, officials said. Heavy rains, compounded by mudslides, often...

Israel's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a cluster of homes in a Jewish settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank was built on privately owned Palestinian land and must therefore be removed. Accepting a petition by Palestinian plaintiffs, Israel's top court overturned a 2018 District...

The head of Hamas resistance group Ismail Haniyeh said on Thursday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has always pushed for intra-Palestine reconciliation. Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, he said: "President Erdogan has been in favor of intra-Palestine reconciliation for a long...

Lebanon's central bank issued a circular Thursday asking banks to recapitalize as part of reviving the banking sector which has been badly hit by the financial meltdown. The circular said banks must urge depositors who transferred more than $500,000 abroad as of July 1, 2017 to deposit...

As a renegade Libyan general seeks to stave off a pair of civil lawsuits in a US court accusing him of responsibility for mass atrocities, he has chosen a risky legal defense, claiming he is immune from legal action under his alleged status as Libya's head of state.  Khalifa Haftar is...

Jordan should release all teachers arrested in a crackdown on their trade union, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday, accusing Amman of using coronavirus as a pretext to stifle peaceful dissent. Authorities closed the Teachers' Syndicate and arrested its leaders on July 25, after it led...