The British government insisted on Sunday the country will leave the European Union on Oct. 31 despite a letter that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced by parliament to send to the bloc requesting a Brexit delay. The Brexit maelstrom has spun wildly in the past week between the...

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper arrived in Afghanistan on Sunday in a bid to bring talks with the Taliban back on track after President Donald Trump abruptly broke off negotiations last month seeking to end the United States’ longest war. Esper’s trip to Kabul comes amid questions about...

Saudi Aramco said Sunday the timing of its long-awaited stock market debut "will depend on market conditions," after the latest delay in the blockbuster initial public offering. The IPO forms the cornerstone of a reform programme conceived by the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince...

The secondary circuit of the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor will be operational within two weeks, Ali Asghar Zarean, a special assistant to the chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, was quoted as saying Sunday by the semi-official Tasnim news agency. The starting of the secondary...

Protesters in Lebanon returned to the streets early on Sunday, keeping pressure on Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri as a self-imposed deadline to deliver a package of badly needed reforms for the country’s crumbling economy drew near. Anti-government protests that have swept the country since...

Palestinian resistance group Hamas has decried Israel's participation in a U.S.-led maritime security meeting in Bahrain. Israel's Channel 13 reported that an Israeli delegation would attend the event, due to open in Manama on Sunday. Israel and Bahrain do not have diplomatic relations....

European Union officials called Sunday for a ceasefire in Afghanistan, saying the breakdown in talks between the US and the Taliban presented an opportunity to push anew for a truce. US President Donald Trump last month declared talks with the insurgents "dead", citing a Taliban attack that...

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other senior members of Congress held talks in Jordan on Saturday with King Abdullah II and other top Jordanian officials. Pelosi said in a statement the visit was at “a critical time for the security and stability of the region... With the deepening...

Floods in southeast Niger have forced 23,000 people to flee their homes since early October, officials said Saturday, threatening a new humanitarian crisis in a region already wracked by Boko Haram Islamist violence. Heavy rains have caused the Komadougou Yobe river that flows through the...

EU leaders were on Sunday considering a request by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to delay Britain's departure from the bloc, which he was forced to make after MPs refused to back his Brexit deal. Johnson has pinned his premiership on getting Britain out of the European Union on October 31,...

Large crowds of Hong Kongers defied a police ban and began an illegal march on Sunday, their numbers swollen by anger over the recent stabbing and beating of two pro-democracy protesters. Authorities had forbidden the march in Tsim Sha Tsui, a densely packed shopping district filled with...

Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said Saturday his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump called him to express his "solidarity" following an attempt to arrest a drug kingpin's son that prompted a wave of violence in the northwestern city of Culiacan. Cartel gunmen surrounded about...

Manchester City brushed aside in-form Crystal Palace 2-0 on Saturday to narrow the gap to Premier League leaders Liverpool to five points. The defending champions travelled to London with questions over their ability to sustain a title challenge after two defeats in four league games but...

 France said Saturday that any new delay in Britain's departure from the EU was "in nobody's interest" after British MPs postponed a decision on a new Brexit deal. "An agreement has been negotiated. It is now up to the British parliament to say whether it accepts or rejects it," the...

Alphabet (Google) subsidiary Wing has become the first company in the United States to deliver packages by drone. In Christiansburg, the small Virginia town chosen as Wing's test location, the 22,000 residents can order products normally shipped by FedEx, medicine from Walgreens and a...

Police and local people searched on Saturday for more bodies in the rubble of a mosque in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province after bomb blasts in which at least 69 people were killed during Friday prayers. The explosives were placed inside the mosque in Jawdara area of Haska Mena...

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Saturday his group was not demanding the resignation of the Lebanese government amid mass protests against plans to impose new taxes.  “The problem is not with the government, but with the agenda,” Nasrallah said in his first comments on the...

Egypt revealed Saturday a rare trove of 30 ancient wooden coffins that have been well-preserved over millennia in the archaeologically rich Valley of the Kings in Luxor. The antiquities ministry officially unveiled the discovery made at Asasif, a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile...

Thousands of Iraqis chanted anti-corruption slogans during the Shiite Arbaeen pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala Saturday, responding to firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's call to keep up anti-government protests. Amid the throngs of black-clad pilgrims mourning the seventh-century...

Beijing and Washington have made "substantial progress" towards a partial trade deal, China's top trade negotiator said Saturday, in his first comments since talks with US president Donald Trump last week. Trump announced a partial deal after meetings in Washington with the Chinese trade...