The president of Spain's protest-hit Catalonia region pledged Thursday to push for a new vote on secession, despite the fallout from a failed 2017 independence bid that sparked the country's worst political crisis in decades. "If they condemn us to 100 years of prison for putting out the...

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party announced Thursday it cannot support Boris Johnson's current Brexit plan, dealing a major blow to the British prime minister just hours before a crunch EU summit. "As things stand, we could not support what is being suggested on customs and...

Japan plans to postpone a major imperial parade celebrating the new emperor's ascension to the throne after nearly 80 people were killed in a devastating typhoon, local media said Thursday. The parade was scheduled for October 22 as part of a series of events marking the official...

Washington is inching toward an agreement with Paris and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on taxing global tech giants, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday. A resolution would ease long-standing transatlantic friction over imposing taxes on tech...

Four US diplomats on Wednesday opened accounts at a Sudanese bank for the first time in decades, as Khartoum seeks to draw international businesses back to the country to help revive the ailing economy. In October 2017, the United States lifted its decades-old trade embargo on Sudan. But...

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam had to abandon her policy speech because of jeering lawmakers on Wednesday but later offered no direct olive branch to pro-democracy protesters, hoping instead to ease resentment by building more public housing. Lam, who had to broadcast the annual address via...

A woman appeared in court Wednesday charged with terrorism offences including scoping out St Paul's cathedral as a possible bomb target. Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 36, was remanded in custody at Westminster Magistrates' Court to appear again at the Old Bailey court on Nov. 1, police said....

Sudan peace talks stalled before they began in Juba Wednesday as a key rebel grouping said it refused to negotiate with Khartoum, claiming government forces were still bombarding its territory. Juba is hosting talks between the government of new prime minister Abdalla Hamdok and...

Following a wave of deadly anti-government protests, Baghdad has announced a slew of measures to stem corruption -- but stopped short of targeting the worst offenders. Analysts say Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, an independent with no real popular support, is hostage to the parties that...

Pakistan's foreign minister said Tuesday that Prime Minister Imran Khan's talks with Tehran and Riyadh had been "encouraging" after visits to try to defuse rising tensions in the Gulf. Khan travelled to Iran and Saudi Arabia as a "facilitator" between the arch-rivals, following a series of...

Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Wednesday issued a royal pardon for journalist Hajar Raissouni, overturning a prison sentence for an "illegal abortion" and sexual relations outside marriage, the justice ministry said. The 28-year-old will walk free "in the coming hours", while sentences...

Even though he deleted the pro-vegan post that started the trouble, Lewis Hamilton continued to be the centre of social media debate on Thursday. It isn't the first time. The Formula One world champion declared on Instagram on Wednesday that he worried about the "extinction of our race" if...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Samuel Fisher publishing house in Frankfurt, Germany, has recently published a novel to young Syrian writer, Nazir Hanafi Al-Ali, entitled Space Without Windows. The novel monitors issues of love, war, homeland, exile and human loss between injustice in his homeland...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's brother entered prison Wednesday to begin a five-year sentence after he was convicted of corruption, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported, citing his lawyer. Hossein Fereydoun, who served as an aide to the president, was arrested in July 2017 and...

An Italian court is to rule Wednesday on whether Leonardo da Vinci's iconic Vitruvian Man drawing can be loaned to France's Louvre, bringing to a head a bitter cultural row. The Venice court last week suspended the loan of the world famous artwork, due to appear later this month in an...

Shares of Turkey’s Halkbank plunged as much 7% on Wednesday, despite a ban on short selling, after U.S. prosecutors charged the state-owned lender with taking part in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran The announcement from U.S. prosecutors came a day after...

Kuwait’s 90-year-old ruler Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah returned home on Wednesday after hospital treatment in the United States, state news agency KUNA said. Sheikh Sabah has ruled the U.S. ally and OPEC oil producer since 2006 and steered its foreign policy for more than 50 years....

Yemen's Saudi-backed government and southern separatists are expected Thursday to announce a deal to end a power struggle in the southern port of Aden that fractured an Arab coalition battling the Iran-aligned Houthi group, officials said. The UAE-backed separatist Southern Transition...

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed four pieces of legislation taking a hard line on China, three related to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and one commending Canada in its dispute over the extradition of a Chinese telecom executive. All four measures passed by...

Japan's government said Wednesday it would set aside millions of dollars to help areas devastated by Typhoon Hagibis, which killed more than 70 people across the country. Hagibis slammed into Japan on Saturday, unleashing fierce winds and unprecedented rain that triggered landslides and...