The Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem will reopen Sunday after a two-month closure due to the novel coronavirus, a senior official said Wednesday. "All the doors of the Al-Aqsa mosque (compound) will be opened at dawn on Sunday," Omar al-Kiswani, the mosque's director, told AFP....

The U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is considerably ahead of schedule, an official told AFP Wednesday, as President Donald Trump reiterated calls for the Pentagon to bring troops home. The developments came as questions loomed over the next phase of Afghanistan's long war, with...

Iran’s president urged his Cabinet Wednesday to speed up harsher laws in so-called honor killings, after a particularly disturbing slaying of a 14-year-old girl by her father shocked the nation. President Hassan Rouhani pushed for speedy adoption of relevant bills, some which have...

.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies, one day after Twitter Inc for the first time added a warning to some of his tweets prompting readers to fact check the president's claims. Trump, without offering any evidence, reiterated his...

The European Commission is proposing a €750 billion recovery fund to reboot economies hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, EU officials said on Wednesday. Speaking ahead of the plan's formal presentation, officials said southern countries worst hit by Covid-19 would get the lion's share of...

The U.S. military accused Russia of covertly deploying at least 14 fighter jets to Libya last week to support Russian mercenaries fighting alongside a beleaguered commander in his campaign to oust the government from Tripoli, the capital. The deployment of the fighter jets appeared to...

Four police officers in Minneapolis were sacked Tuesday as a video showing one of them kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed black man who later died sparked street protests in the midwestern US city. Protesters, many wearing face masks because of the coronavirus outbreak, held signs saying...

France's economy is on course to contract 20% in the second quarter from the previous three months as the country emerges from a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, the INSEE official statistics agency estimated on Wednesday. That would mark a sharp deterioration in France's recession after...

Appeals for the Taliban to extend a ceasefire with Afghan forces went unanswered Wednesday, but there were no reports of major violence and the militants said they would release some government prisoners. A three-day pause in fighting which ended on Tuesday provided a rare respite from the...

Hong Kong police placed a dragnet around the financial hub's legislature Wednesday and fired pepper-ball rounds in the commercial district as they tried to stamp out protests against a bill banning insults to China's national anthem. The latest unrest comes days after China announced...

Iran convened its newly elected parliament Wednesday, dominated by conservative lawmakers and under strict social distancing regulations, as the country struggles to curb the spread of the coronavirus that has hit the nation hard. Iran is grappling with one of the deadliest outbreaks in the...

The U.N. patent agency has hailed the push to create a coronavirus vaccine and make it globally available, but warned against allowing copyright rows to overshadow and delay the process. "What we need in the first place here is innovation," Francis Gurry, the head of the U.N.'s World...

Houthi fighters in Yemen fired missiles at a military base of the Saudi-backed government in Marib province, northeast of the capital Sanaa, Tuesday, killing seven people including relatives of the chief of staff, three military sources said. The assault took place after the expiry of a...

South Korea reported its highest number of new coronavirus infections in weeks Wednesday and India reported another record single-day jump of more than 6,000 cases, as the pandemic expanded its grip across much of the globe. Still, optimism over reopening economies from business shutdowns...

Saudi Arabian police in Assir, a region close to the Yemeni border, are investigating after a shooting incident in which six citizens died Tuesday, state-run news agency SPA reported Wednesday. Three Saudis were also injured and taken to hospital, it said, giving no details on the nature of...

The head of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah Tuesday rejected a US request to empower a UN peacekeeping force patrolling the border with Israel. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah spoke ahead of a UN Security Council vote this summer to renew the mandate of the UN Interim Force in...

US President Donald Trump is "displeased" by China's attempts to rollback Hong Kong's semi-autonomous status, the White House said Tuesday as US-Sino relations continue to simmer. Spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said the president is not only unhappy with Beijing's efforts, but maintains "it...

Turkey is seeing a significant rise in the number of COVID-19 recoveries, the country's Health Ministry said on Tuesday. The number of patients who recovered from the disease hit 121,507, as 1,492 more were discharged from hospitals over the past day, said Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on...

Joshua Kimmich's first-half lob gave leaders Bayern Munich a 1-0 victory at second-placed Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga Tuesday to close in on the league title with a seven-point advantage over their rivals and six games left in the season. Kimmich sent a perfectly-weighted chip over...

International health authorities expressed concern Tuesday over signs the spread of the new coronavirus is "still accelerating" in Brazil, Peru and Chile. "In South America, we are particularly concerned that the number of new cases reported last week in Brazil was the highest for a...