President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate retired Gen. James Mattis to be his defense secretary. Mattis, 66, is a Marine Corps general who retired in 2013 after serving as the commander of the U.S. Central Command. Trump made the announcement Thursday night at a...

Outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon apologized to the people of Haiti on Thursday for the world body's role in a deadly cholera outbreak that has killed more than 9,300 people and was blamed on Nepali U.N. peacekeepers. Haiti was free of cholera until 2010, when the...

Canada has restricted six chemicals used to make the opioid fentanyl, which has been blamed in thousands of overdose deaths across the country. "This will make it harder to access the chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl, and provide law enforcement with a stronger ability to take action...

The UN envoy to Yemen and President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi met Thursday in the southern city of Aden to discuss a new bid to end the country's conflict, a government official said. Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who flew in from Riyadh, held several hours of talks with Hadi at the hilltop...

The United States is "watching very carefully" for Islamic State militants operating outside Sirte as the jihadist group faces defeat in its former North African stronghold, a senior U.S. Department of State official told Reuters. Libyan forces have been battling Islamic State in Sirte for...

Russia will continue its operations in eastern Aleppo and will rescue the Syrian city from terrorists, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday during a visit to Turkey. Speaking at a joint press conference after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in the...

Australia's parliament was hit by a second day of protests by anti-offshore detention center activists Thursday with two people abseiling down the building to unfurl a banner reading "close the bloody camps now". While the pair scaled Parliament House a dozen others waded into a forecourt...

For more than a decade, Maria Vazquez's store had a special gift basket to celebrate Fidel Castro's death. For $24.99, it includes a bottle of cider with the label "only open after Fidel's death," and toilet paper bearing the Cuban leader image. She's sold more than 250 since Castro's death...

Warships from Russia's Black Sea Fleet have taken up position off Crimea's western coastline to help strengthen the peninsula's air defenses in response to the start of Ukrainian missile tests nearby, the RIA news agency reported on Thursday. Kiev began two days of missile tests on Thursday,...

A top UN envoy on Wednesday pleaded with the Security Council to help break the siege of Aleppo, warning that residents of the Syrian city were at risk of extermination. "For the sake of humanity we call on -- we plead -- with the parties and those with influence to do everything in their...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed the situation in Syria's Aleppo with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by phone for the third time in a week Wednesday and agreed on the need for a cease-fire, sources in Erdogan's office said. The sources said the two leaders agreed on...

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he would leave his business conglomerate to focus solely on the presidency. “I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump tweeted using his campaign...

A plane that crashed in the mountains of Colombia, killing 71 people, including members of a Brazilian football team, may have run out of fuel, a Colombian military source told AFP. "It is very suspicious that despite the impact there was no explosion. That reinforces the theory of the lack...

 Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Wednesday he hoped that the situation in Syria's Aleppo could be sorted out by the end of this year, the RIA news agency cited him as saying. "We are hoping for this of course," Bogdanov was quoted as saying, when asked if the...

Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Tuesday defended the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy, arguing that from nuclear weapons proliferation to climate change it has made the world more secure. In a speech to the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, Kerry seemed to make a direct appeal to...

The Somali student who wounded 11 people in a car-ramming and knife attack on an Ohio university campus was a "soldier" of the Islamic State group, a jihadist-linked news agency said Tuesday. "The executor of the attack in the American state of Ohio is a soldier of the Islamic State," the...

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier Tuesday pressed his Russian counterpart to allow humanitarian relief supplies to reach people in rebel-held eastern Aleppo in Syria, members of Steinmeier's delegation said. Steinmeier spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after the...

Russia plans to send 100,000 tons of wheat in humanitarian aid to Syria this year, government officials said Tuesday. A source at the agriculture ministry has said Russia has been considering sending around 100,000 tons of wheat to Syria from government stocks. "I can't say how much, but...

Embattled South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday that she would allow the National Assembly to determine her fate, signaling that she would resign over a corruption and influence-peddling scandal if lawmakers so demanded. Relinquishing her previously defiant tone, Park struck a...

(The Daily Star)- French foreign affairs minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called on Tuesday for an immediate United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in the Syrian city of Aleppo, which has been devastated by fighting. "More than ever before, we need to urgently put in...