Six Saudi Arabian prisoners held in Yemen by the Iran-aligned Houthi group have returned home in a move facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Saudi state media, the ICRC and Houthi media said Wednesday. The six men arrived in Riyadh Wednesday, the spokesman for...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strongly condemned U.S. attacks on Iran-allied militia group in Iraq, Iranian state TV reported on Wednesday, blaming the United States for the violence in the neighbouring country. “The Iranian government, nation and I strongly condemn the...

The Taliban unleashed a new wave of attacks in northern Afghanistan, targeting members of the country's security forces and killing at least 26, local officials said Wednesday. The insurgents quickly claimed responsibility for all the attack. The Taliban today hold sway over practically...

The leader of France's hardline CGT union Wednesday urged all workers to join pension strikes that have crippled public transport over the past month, as a showdown with President Emmanuel Macron enters a second month. In his New Year's address Tuesday Macron vowed not to back down on his...

Four people died as Indonesia's capital was hit by flooding, a disaster agency official said Wednesday, while local media reported landslides sparked by torrential rain on New Year's Eve had killed several more residents. Electricity was switched off in hundreds of waterlogged...

Pro-Iran protesters dug in outside the US embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, throwing rocks and burning US flags a day after making a dramatic incursion into the compound. Thousands of Iraqi supporters of the largely Iranian-trained Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force had gathered at the...

India plans to make a fresh attempt to land an unmanned mission on the moon in 2020 after a failed bid last year, the head of the country's space programme said Wednesday. Work is going "smoothly" on the Chandrayaan-3 mission to put a rover probe on the moon's surface, Indian Space Research...

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday that he has decided to immediately dispatch a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division to Iraq following violent protests at the American embassy in Baghdad. "At the direction of the Commander in Chief @POTUS, I have authorized the deployment of...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Iran will pay a heavy price for any attack on the American embassy in Baghdad amid protests against U.S. airstrikes in Iraq over the weekend. In a pair of tweets, Trump said the diplomatic compound is safe and additional forces had arrived on the...

Hong Kong was readying for a massive pro-democracy rally Wednesday after seeing in the New Year with an evening of peaceful protests that morphed into tear gas-choked clashes between hardcore demonstrators and police. The city has been battered by more than six months of unrest with...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dream project of building a canal in Istanbul to rival those at Suez and Panama has turned into a political showdown with the city's new mayor. Ekrem Imamoglu, who won a shock victory for the opposition in 2019 to become mayor of Turkey's largest city, says...

The usually staid Japanese media lambasted the "cowardly" Carlos Ghosn on Wednesday, after the tycoon jumped bail and fled to Lebanon to avoid trial in Japan. "Running away is a cowardly act that mocks Japan's justice system," said the Yomiuri Shimbun, with Ghosn facing multiple charges of...

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said on Wednesday the island would not accept a “one country, two systems” political formula Beijing has suggested could be used to unify the democratic island, saying such an arrangement had failed in Hong Kong. China claims Taiwan as its territory, to be...

Mexico's ambassador to Bolivia left the country Tuesday after being expelled by the interim government following a diplomatic row over her embassy's sheltering of officials linked to ex-president Evo Morales. Maria Teresa Mercado was declared "persona non grata" after Mexico was accused of...

The Arab League called Tuesday for efforts to "prevent foreign interference" in Libya in the wake of military and maritime agreements signed by Turkey with the UN-recognised government in Tripoli. Permanent representatives of the pan-Arab organisation, in a meeting at its Cairo headquarters...

Israel's offshore Leviathan field started pumping gas on Tuesday in what the operating consortium hailed as "a historic turning point" for the Israeli economy. A joint statement from partners Noble Energy, Delek Drilling, and Ratio said the start of production was expected to lead to an...

US personnel at the American embassy in Baghdad, which has come under attack by pro-Iran protesters, are safe and there are no plans to evacuate, the State Department said Tuesday. "Our first priority is the safety and security of US personnel," a State Department spokesperson said in a...

Israeli forces martyred 149 Palestinians during the year 2019 in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian group said Tuesday. The National Gathering of Palestinian Martyrs' Families said the martyrs include 33 children and 12 women. According to the group, the Israeli...

Inside a Lebanese bank, a woman screams for her salary. A man pounds his fist on the marble counter, demanding the teller release $200. In crisis-hit Lebanon, this is the new normal. "It's a shocking experience," said Khaled Taki, a 68-year-old consultant whose bank last week refused to...

French President Emmanuel Macron will address the nation Tuesday in a bid to win support for a pension overhaul that has prompted the biggest transport strike in decades, upending travel plans for thousands over the holidays. The strike -- now the longest such transport stoppage since the...