President Hassan Rouhani will make the first visit to Japan by an Iranian head of state for two decades Friday, as Tokyo seeks to mediate between Tehran and Washington amid spiralling nuclear tensions. The trip comes after violent protests last month over petroleum price hikes in Iran,...

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are expected to cost some 1.35 trillion yen ($12.6 billion), organisers said Friday, unveiling a final budget showing increased revenue balancing out extra costs including countermeasures against heat. However, officials admitted the budget does not yet include...

The Pentagon said Thursday it had conducted background checks on all Saudi military personnel currently training in the United States and found no "immediate threat scenario," two weeks after a deadly shooting rampage by a Saudi air force officer. Defense Department officials had...

Nearly 30,000 police officers have been killed since 2003, the end of the Saddam Hussein era, Iraqi officials announced Wednesday  "The Interior Ministry can list 28,600 martyrs from 2003 until now," Zamil al-Saadi, the ministry’s director of martyrs and wounded affairs, said in a...

Libya's Tripoli-based UN-recognized government will activate a recent pact for military cooperation with Turkey.  In a statement, the Cabinet of the Government of National Accord (GNA) said it held an emergency meeting with military commanders on confronting an offensive by eastern...

UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian Territory said Thursday that 2.4 million people are in need of assistance, but the UN is targeting just 1.5 million because of funding difficulties.   Jamie McGoldrick held a news briefing in Geneva after Palestinian Prime...

The United States said new evidence and analysis of weapons debris recovered from an attack on Saudi oil facilities on Sept. 14 indicates the strike likely came from the north, reinforcing its earlier assessment that Iran was behind the offensive. In an interim report of its investigation -...

The Arab League Thursday condemned Brazil's opening of a trade office in Jerusalem and warned it against carrying out President Jair Bolsonaro's pledge to move its embassy there. The Brazilian leader has said he will follow US President Donald Trump's controversial step of moving his...

A gunman opened fire on the headquarters of Russia's FSB security service in central Moscow Thursday evening in a rare shooting incident that the FSB said had left at least one of its employees dead. The attack happened shortly after President Vladimir Putin had delivered his annual news...

US President Donald Trump pressed his Republican allies Thursday to exert rigid control of his Senate trial and ensure a swift exoneration, a day after he was impeached in a historic rebuke by the House of Representatives. A bitter fight looms over the coming hearings, expected to begin as...

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on the Iranian judge who sentenced a recently freed American and vowed more punishment over the suppression of protests. US officials said that Abdolghassem Salavati, a Revolutionary Court judge in Tehran, has sentenced more than 100 people to...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Syrian Central Bank has accused exchange and money transfer companies with supporting terrorism, which led to their closure with the promise to put the owners under trial following formal and thorough investigations. On Thursday morning, the Central Bank published...

The UN set itself a daunting challenge this week aimed at improving the lives of displaced people, reining in climate change and even preventing conflict: to bring electric power to all refugee camps by 2030. The target is enormously ambitious given that more than 90 percent of refugees...

Warring parties in Yemen’s Taiz governorate have exchanged dozens of prisoners in a locally-mediated swap, the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and government sources said on Thursday. The local deal coincided with renewed diplomatic efforts by the United Nations this week and as Saudi Arabia...

Iraqi political leaders faced a midnight deadline Thursday to choose a new prime minister to run a country shaken by months of unprecedented street protests that have left hundreds dead. If parliament fails to propose a candidate from inter-party negotiations to replace outgoing Adel Abdel...

Preliminary results from Afghanistan's delayed presidential polls will be announced in the coming days, an election official said Thursday, after a main candidate ended his boycott of a recount. The country has been stuck in political limbo since the vote, with the two top candidates --...

Muslim nations need to do more business among themselves, trade in each other’s currencies and keep up with non-Islamic countries to stop being left at their mercy, their leaders said on Thursday at a summit boycotted by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation...

A Pakistan special court issued a bizarre but apparently symbolic order for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on Thursday, saying his corpse should be dragged to parliament and hang for three days if he dies before his execution. The court sentenced Musharraf to death on Tuesday after...

Former minister Hassan Diab looks set to be named Lebanon’s new prime minister on Thursday with backing from the Iran-backed group Hezbollah and its allies, a move that could complicate Lebanon’s efforts to secure badly needed Western financial aid. Lebanon, wrestling with the worst...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he wants to see an end to the conflict in Libya and then talks between the two opposing sides to begin. Speaking at an annual news conference in Moscow, Putin said he would discuss Libya with a Turkish delegation in Russia in the coming...