Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday corrected statements he had made in parliament, apologising for what he said were mistakes regarding a political funding scandal that has also cast a pall over the current premier. Abe said he felt deeply responsible for making...

President Donald Trump's pardons of five people from his 2016 election campaign caps his effort to bleach out the stain on his tenure of the Russia interference investigation. The US leader never accepted the conclusions of US intelligence and special counsel Robert Mueller that Moscow...

Hong Kong extended its compulsory quarantine to three weeks for almost all international travellers from Friday, saying the measure was needed to prevent new, more infectious, coronavirus variants from spreading. The government said expert advice suggested that the incubation period of the...

Controversial Tunisian media mogul and former presidential candidate Nabil Karoui was rearrested on Thursday in connection with an affair involving money laundering and tax evasion, a judicial spokesman said. A judge from a unit dealing with financial crimes issued a warrant against Karoui,...

Gunmen on motorbike shot dead a women's rights activist and her brother north of Afghanistan's capital Thursday, officials said, as a wave of assassinations ravages the violence-wracked country. Freshta Kohistani, aged 29, was the second activist to be killed in two days after a prominent...

Republicans on Thursday blocked an effort to amend the hard-won pandemic relief package to more than triple direct payments to struggling Americans, something demanded by President Donald Trump. After months of partisan bickering, legislators late Monday finally approved a $900 billion...

Threatening to tank Congress’ massive COVID relief and government funding package, President Donald Trump’s demand for bigger aid checks for Americans is forcing Republicans traditionally wary of such spending into an uncomfortable test of allegiance. On Thursday, House Democrats who also...

Coronavirus misery hung over Christmas preparations worldwide on Thursday, with countless millions forced to cancel plans or limit festivities under fresh virus lockdowns. After a grinding pandemic year that has seen more than 1.7 million people die from Covid-19, a slew of new outbreaks...

A prominent advocate of democracy in Afghanistan who headed an election monitoring organisation was gunned down on Wednesday in a Kabul neighbourhood, drawing widespread condemnation locally and internationally. Yousuf Rasheed, executive director of the Free and Fair Elections Forum of...

The head of Israel's Labor Party said Wednesday he will not seek re-election as leader of the former ruling party as the country enters its fourth election campaign in two years. The Knesset, Israel's parliament, dissolved at midnight after the government failed to pass a national budget...

With less than a month before Joe Biden moves into the White House, Moscow on Wednesday accused the incoming US administration of "Russophobia" after the president-elect promised to punish Russia for a major cyber attack. Biden is expected to take a tougher stance against Russia than Donald...

Face masks reduce the risk of spreading large Covid-linked droplets when speaking or coughing by up to 99.9 percent, according to a lab experiment with mechanical mannequins and human subjects, researchers said Wednesday. A woman standing two metres (yards) from a coughing man without a...

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey hopes to “turn a new page” in its ties with the United States and European Union, and that Ankara had been subjected to “double standards” by both its NATO ally Washington and the bloc. Earlier this month, Washington sanctioned Turkey...

Japan needs to boost renewable energy by reforming outdated policies on land use and the national grid if it is to meet a new goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, industry players and experts say. Since announcing the 2050 target in November, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's government has...

After more than a decade fighting for the Taliban and being hounded by Afghan and US forces, Haji Lala thought there was little chance of ever returning home. Once a commander and senior district official for the insurgent group, he says he was captured by Pakistan's security services who...

Venezuela's vital oil industry is failing and the socialist government is feeling the pressure, and now the regime of President Nicolas Maduro is being accused of lashing out at the sector's unions. In recent months, several union leaders have been arrested, accused of terrorism, sharing...

US Defense Secretary Christopher Miller met Tuesday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul during an unannounced visit to Afghanistan. Miller, who is acting head of the Pentagon until President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month, and Ghani discussed the ongoing talks with the...

Thousands of protesters rallied in Armenia's capital on Tuesday demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resign over a controversial peace deal with Azerbaijan as the opposition launched a nationwide strike. Some 25,000 protesters flooded the centre of Yerevan, according to an AFP...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the government is focused on the education and empowerment of Muslim girls in the country. Speaking at the centennial celebrations of India’s world-famous Aligarh Muslim University via video conferencing, Modi said school dropout of Muslim...

China on Tuesday said its newly-built indigenous rocket made a successful flight to space with five satellites. Deemed as a major push in China’s space program project, the 356-ton new rocket from Long March series is said “to become reusable 10 times by 2025, and by 2035,” Chinese daily...