American Muslim leaders Friday decried Donald Trump's rhetoric towards their community and predicted the president's travel ban would eventually be proven unlawful, a day after a weakened version of the measure came into force. A limited version of Trump's travel ban -- temporarily barring...

President Donald Trump is forming a National Space Council to be led by Vice President Mike Pence. The president signed an executive order Friday to revive a council last in place in 1993. Trump says the announcement sends a clear signal to the world about the United States' leadership...

The United Nations Friday approved a nearly $600 million cut to its peacekeeping budget following pressure from the United States to reduce funding to the world body. The General Assembly approved by consensus the annual budget expected to total $7.3 billion, down from the current $7.87...

President Donald Trump declared that the US had run out of patience with North Korea over its nuclear drive Friday as he welcomed South Korea's new leader Moon Jae-In to talks at the White House. While Moon has been arguing for greater engagement with Pyongyang as the best way to put the...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump amid tensions over Washington's decision to arm Syrian Kurdish forces fighting the Daesh (ISIS), a Turkish official said Friday. Mahir Unal, a spokesman for Erdogan's ruling party, said the two leaders spoke by...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the report by an international chemical weapons watchdog that confirmed a chemical attack in Syria doesn't back claims by the U.S. and its allies that the substance was dropped from aircraft. President Bashar Assad and his ally Russia have denied the...

The White House envoy coordinating the US-led coalition fighting Daesh (ISIS) was holding talks in Ankara Friday a day after visiting a Syrian Kurdish militia deemed by Turkey to be "terrorists". The visit by Brett McGurk, which was not announced in advance, comes a month after Turkish...

The United States imposed sanctions on two Chinese citizens and a shipping company on Thursday for helping North Korea's nuclear and missile programs and accused a Chinese bank of laundering money for Pyongyang. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the actions were designed to cut off...

The dollar was on course for its worst quarter in seven years on Friday, recovering only marginally against major peers after a week of hawkish central bank jawboning on inflation that has shaken major currency markets. It gained around 0.2 percent against the euro in early trade in Europe,...

The US Treasury Department on Thursday slapped sanctions on a Chinese bank over illicit activities in North Korea, including facilitating the production of weapons of mass destruction. Bank of Dandong which "acts as a conduit for illicit North Korean financial activity, is a foreign bank of...

A Moscow jury convicted five men on Thursday in the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on a bridge near the Kremlin two years ago, ending a nine-month trial that his supporters said had failed to bring the true masterminds of slaying to justice. The brazen killing so close to...

( Al-Monitor )- Congress is threatening to cut funding for Iraq’s vaunted Kurdish peshmerga fighters if the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ends up splitting with Baghdad. The House Armed Services Committee released a draft annual defense bill this week that makes continued funding for...

More than 16 years into the Afghanistan war, the United States and its NATO allies wrangled anew on Thursday over how to meet the need for more troops to counter the resurgent Taliban and help the Afghan forces break a stalemate in the fight. At a meeting in Brussels, NATO agreed to send...

President Donald Trump's temporary ban on people from six predominantly Muslim countries and all refugees entering the United States is finally scheduled to take effect later on Thursday, but in a scaled-back form that still allows in some travelers. The rollout of the controversial measure...

France said on Thursday it saw a chance to break the stalemate in Syria's war as Russia now seemed to accept there could be no military solution and preconditions set by some opponents of President Bashar Assad had been dropped. The election of President Emmanuel Macron has provided an...

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad appeared so far to have heeded a warning this week from Washington not to carry out a chemical weapons attack. Russia, the Syrian government's main backer in the country's civil war,...

The Trump administration on Wednesday set new criteria for visa applicants from six mainly Muslim nations and all refugees that require a "close" family or business tie to the United States. The move came after the Supreme Court partially restored President Donald Trump's executive order that...

It will be "many months" before authorities will be able to give a final death toll for the London tower block blaze, police said on Wednesday while stressing the enormity of the task. "We are many months from being able to provide the number of people who accurately represents the loss of...

US President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to join his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at Bastille Day celebrations in Paris on July 14, French and US officials said Wednesday. Trump will attend the traditional military parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue, where US soldiers will...

Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy to the coalition against Islamic State visited north Syria on Wednesday and met the council planning to run Raqqa after its capture from the jihadists to assure it of support, one of its members said. The U.S.-led coalition is supporting the Syrian...