Turkey's defense minister said on Wednesday there had been a slight change in the stance of the United States toward an operation on Syria's Raqqa and the role of a Syrian Kurdish militia as a result of Turkey's persistence on the matter. In an interview with broadcaster NTV, Defence...

Russia has called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to stop his bombing campaign while peace talks take place this week, but a political breakthrough on the six-year war remains unlikely, the UN's envoy said Wednesday. Staffan de Mistura's comments came on the eve of a new round of talks in...

China, in an early test of U.S. President Donald Trump, is nearly finished building almost two dozen structures on artificial islands in the South China Sea that appear designed to house long-range surface-to-air missiles, two U.S. officials told Reuters. The development is likely to raise...

Britain will provide additional aid money to South Sudan, where famine has been declared in parts of the country, and to Somalia, where there is a credible risk of famine, the government said Wednesday. Britain will provide 100 million pounds ($125 million) to each country in 2017/18 in...

Malaysian police on Wednesday named a senior official in North Korea's embassy and a staffer at its state airline, who are wanted for questioning over the murder last week of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader. Kim Jong Nam, 46, was killed at Kuala Lumpur...

An unmanned Russian cargo ship lifted off successfully Wednesday on a supply mission to the International Space Station. A Soyuz-U booster rocket carrying the Progress MS-05 spacecraft blasted off as scheduled at 11:58 a.m. (0558 GMT) from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch complex in...

The Army Corps of Engineers' plan to close a Dakota Access pipeline protest camp that's been around for more than six months isn't likely to be the demise of on-the-ground opposition in North Dakota. Wednesday's deadline for the protesters to leave also may not spell the end of heavy law...

The U.S. secretaries of state and homeland security meet with Mexico's president Thursday, seeking to ease diplomatic tensions over President Donald Trump's trade and immigration policies. With the countries' relations at their most strained in years, President Enrique Pena Nieto will host...

An Israeli soldier was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a Tel Aviv military court on Tuesday for fatally shooting an already-injured Palestinian man in March of last year. Elor Azaria, 18, was convicted of manslaughter in January after the court ruled he had "needlessly" killed...

Some 40 human rights groups and other organizations say that U.N.-sponsored Syrian peace talks that will begin in Geneva this week should prioritize five key human rights issues during negotiations. The groups said in a statement Tuesday that achieving respect and promotion for human...

Suicide bombers attacked a court complex in Pakistan Tuesday, killing at least four people, officials said, in the latest incident in a new surge of Islamist violence. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction claimed responsibility for the attack in the northwestern...

Chinese authorities have ordered all motor vehicles in Bayingol prefecture in far-western Xinjiang to be installed with mandatory satellite tracking devices, the latest tough anti-terror measure targeting the ethnically divided region. China has been stepping up already tight security in...

Jakarta was hit by widespread flooding Tuesday after hours of torrential rain, with thousands of homes inundated, cars stranded and people forced to wade through murky brown water. Water up to 1.5 meters (five feet) deep deluged parts of the Indonesian capital after a major thunderstorm...

London-based bank HSBC reported Tuesday that annual profit slumped by more than 80 percent following a year of "unexpected economic and political events" that contributed to volatile markets and influenced investment activity. Europe's biggest bank that net profit for 2016 tumbled 82 percent...

Five people were killed on Tuesday when a small plane crashed in to the roof of a shopping mall after taking off from an airfield outside Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, police said. The twin-turboprop Beechcraft King Air plane suffered engine failure and crashed into the mall...

Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, has died in New York, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday. The ministry gave no details on the circumstances of his death but offered condolences to his relatives and said the diplomat had died one day before...

Europeans have reacted to U.S. President Donald Trump's first month in office with demonstrations, counter-barbs and sheer angst that a century of trans-Atlantic friendship may be sinking. The governments of some traditional allies have gone a step further, uniting with fundraising plans and...

Preparations are under way to bring senior North Korean officials to the United States for talks with former U.S. officials, the first such meeting in more than five years, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. The talks would be the clearest indication yet that North Korean leader Kim...

Yemeni rebels have abducted a dozen local staff working for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Red Sea district of Hodeida, a minister and local sources said Monday. Local sources told AFP the employees, all Yemeni citizens, were taken in a Thursday raid over accusations they had accepted...

Monks and police scuffled on Monday at a Buddhist temple in Thailand where security forces are trying to arrest an influential former abbot on money-laundering charges. The standoff at the scandal-hit Dhammakaya Temple represents one of the biggest challenges to the authority of Thailand's...