President Nicolas Maduro's adversaries are to stage a two-day national strike from Wednesday in a final push to pressure him into abandoning a weekend election for a super-congress they say will institutionalize autocracy in Venezuela. Millions participated in a 24-hour shutdown last week,...

New U.S. sanctions aimed at curbing North Korean's weapons programs, including measures aimed at Chinese entities and financial institutions, can be expected "fairly soon," a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday. Asked when such sanctions could be expected and whether they could come within...

A Yazidi boy rescued from the battlefield in Mosul after three years in Islamic State captivity has asked to be reunited with his mother, who was granted asylum in Canada after escaping from the militants herself. Twelve year-old Imad Tammo was captured by Islamic State along with his family...

Venezuela's main business guild Fedecamaras demanded Tuesday that President Nicolas Maduro's government abort a controversial vote scheduled for Sunday to create a special congress capable of rewriting the country's constitution. Critics have called it a dictatorial move and U.S. President...

Any U.S. decision to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons would set back peace efforts and escalate tensions, the Kremlin said Tuesday. The Kremlin was referring to an interview given by U.S. special envoy on Ukraine, Kurt Volker, to Britain's broadcaster BBC, in which he said that Washington...

 Anger was growing in Pakistan Tuesday as the grief-stricken relatives of 26 people killed by a suicide bomber in Lahore a day earlier buried their loved ones and demanded the government publicly hang the masterminds of the attack. Families and residents in the bustling eastern city...

US President Donald Trump on Monday announced he had ended a program to support rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad because it was "massive, dangerous, and wasteful." The comments came days after General Tony Thomas, the head of US special operations confirmed that the...

President Donald Trump has assailed The Washington Post in connection with a story about the termination of U.S. efforts to aid rebels fighting to oust Syria's President Bashar Assad. In a post on his Twitter account Monday, Trump said, "The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my...

 Venezuela's angry opposition is pushing for a boycott of an upcoming vote that it dismisses as a ploy by President Nicolas Maduro to cling to power. Ahead of next Sunday's election for a 500-plus member assembly to rewrite the constitution and give the president more power, the...

The Australian foreign minister on Tuesday rejected the United Nations refugee agency's allegation that her government reneged on a deal to resettle some refugees who attempted to reach Australia by boat. The UNHCR said on Monday it had agreed to facilitate a deal in which the United States...

A federal judge in Michigan halted on Monday the deportation of more than 1,400 Iraqi nationals from the United States, the latest legal victory for the Iraqi nationals facing deportation in a closely watched case. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith granted a preliminary injunction requested...

Donald Trump's war of words against his attorney general and one-time ally Jeff Sessions escalated Monday, raising speculation the president may be preparing the ground to replace him. Trump took to Twitter to declare his top lawyer "beleaguered" as he wondered out loud why Sessions was not...

A suicide bomber killed at least 16 people, many of them police, in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday, officials said, shattering a period of relative calm in Pakistan's second-largest city. The blast wrought carnage near the Lahore Technology Park in the center of the city,...

 A man armed with a chainsaw injured at least five people in Switzerland on Monday and is on the run after a rampage that police said was not "a terrorist act". Authorities were first alerted about the attack in the old quarter of Schaffhausen at 10:39 am (0839 GMT), the ATS news agency...

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte vowed Monday to press on with his controversial drug war that has claimed thousands of lives, as he outlined his vision of an "eye-for-an-eye" justice system. Duterte devoted large chunks of his annual State of the Nation Address to pushing his...

( The Guardian )- European and African ministers are to meet in Tunis on Monday to discuss a plan to try to regularise the flow of refugees from Africa to Europe to about 20,000, coupled with a much tougher strategy to deport illegal migrants from Italy and break up smuggling rings. The plan...

Congressional investigators probing Russia's meddling in the U.S. election will have their first opportunity this week to hear from someone in President Donald Trump's innermost circle: son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner will talk to staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee Monday behind...

A top aide to US President Donald Trump was due in Israel Monday in a bid to ease tensions over new security measures at a highly sensitive Jerusalem holy site, a US official said. "President Trump's special representative for international negotiations Jason Greenblatt departed for Israel...

At least 24 people have been killed and 42 wounded after a Taliban car bomb struck a bus carrying government employees in western Kabul Monday, officials said, the latest attack to strike the Afghan capital. "The car bomb hit a bus carrying employees of the ministry of mines during rush...

The new US special envoy on Ukraine said Sunday that Russia is responsible for the "hot war" in the country's east, after fresh clashes between government forces and Russian-backed rebels. Kurt Volker, who was appointed this month as the State Department's special representative for...