Hezbollah's leader said Friday the group was not concerned with the verdict of a U.N.-backed tribunal over the 2005 assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri due on August 18. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said if any members of the four members of the group are indicted, Hezbollah would stand by their...

 Lebanon's Prosecutor General Ghassan Oueidat has pressed charges against 25 people, including senior port and customs officials and security officers, over the massive Beirut port blast that killed 172 people, a judicial source told Reuters on Friday. It was not immediately clear what...

Claudette Halabi cried out from beneath the rubble of her house for an hour before she died. The neighbors couldn't save her. "We kept hearing the screams. I heard her voice. But we couldn't do anything. It still hurts," said Johnny Khawand, near the remains of her Beirut building. The...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro received the best approval rating of his term Friday, boosted by his popularity among recipients of coronavirus stimulus payments despite the carnage the pandemic has caused in Brazil. The far-right leader's approval rating surged five points from June, to...

Ten days after the deadly Beirut explosion, rescue workers recovered the remains of firefighters killed while battling the initial blaze, as authorities appointed a well-respected judge to lead the investigation. Beirut, brought to its knees by the cataclysmic explosion, has seen the...

Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza rallied Friday against Israel's agreement with the United Arab Emirates. Under the agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump, Israel and the UAE will normalise diplomatic ties, brought together by a confluence of interests against Iran. A...

Turkish bombardment killed three Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, a local official said Friday, as Baghdad seeks to rally support to end Ankara's offensive on its soil. Turkey launched a cross-border ground and air operation in mid-June against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in the...

President Tayyip Erdogan warned Greece Friday that Turkey will retaliate against any attack on its survey vessel Oruc Reis in the eastern Mediterranean in an escalating row between the NATO allies over gas and oil exploration in the region. Turkey and Greece are vehemently at odds over...

The French government has declared Paris and the Bouches-du-Rhone area around Marseille on the Mediterranean coast as "red" zones with a high coronavirus infection risk, according to a government decree published Friday. The decree gives local authorities the power to limit the circulation...

 Israel has not abandoned its plan to annex the West Bank despite Thursday's agreement to sign a peace deal with the United Arab Emirates, the US Ambassador to Israel said. "It's not off the table, it's just something that will be deferred until we give peace every single chance,"...

Negotiators from the United States and China will Saturday discuss the "phase one" trade deal signed earlier this year -- before the coronavirus slammed the world economy and relations between the two economic powers took a turn for the worse. Washington and Beijing's January deal...

The UN Security Council started voting Thursday evening on a US resolution that would indefinitely extend the UN arms embargo on Iran, a measure that faces strong opposition from Russia and China and is almost certain to be defeated. The results of the email voting because of the COVID-19...

Israel and the UAE agreed Thursday to normalize relations, a historic shift making the Gulf state only the third Arab country to establish full diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Here is how the world is reacting: - United States - "HUGE breakthrough today! Historic Peace...

Fresh Israeli air strikes hit Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Friday, Israel's army said, as a week of hostilities between the Jewish State and the Palestinian enclave raged on. Israel says the strikes, and other measures including halting the territory's fuel supply, are in retaliation...

Afghan authorities on Friday said they had started to release 400 Taliban prisoners, the final hurdle in long-delayed peace talks between the two warring sides, even as President Ashraf Ghani warned they were a "danger to the world". The Afghan government and the Taliban are set to meet...

White House advisor Jared Kushner predicted a "very good chance" of Israel and another Arab country announcing a peace deal within the next three months after Thursday's announcement of normalization between Israel and the UAE. "I do think there's a very good chance," Kushner, who is...

The World Health Organization Thursday downplayed the danger of the coronavirus latching on to food packaging and urged people not to be afraid of the virus entering the food chain. Two cities in China said they had found traces of the coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food...

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Thursday welcomed a deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel on normalizing ties that includes an Israeli agreement to halt further annexation of Palestinian lands. "I followed with interest and appreciation the joint statement between the...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Thursday warned of a "heavy price" if a Turkish vessel searching for oil and gas in disputed Mediterranean waters was attacked and hinted that one incident had already occurred. Existing tensions between Turkey and Greece escalated when Ankara this...

Iraq has urged its Arab allies to help persuade Turkey to withdraw its troops from Iraqi territory, where they have been raiding Kurdish militant positions, the foreign ministry said Thursday. Its comments come two days after a Turkish drone strike killed two high-ranking Iraqi officers in...