Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelled Friday a weekend curfew introduced to halt the spread of coronavirus, pointing to concerns over the economy. Turkey has been locked down on weekends and public holidays since April, and the interior ministry said in the early hours of Friday...

The head of Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency has been convicted over publishing an article that quotes a former ambassador criticizing Tehran's "arbitrary" intelligence operations in Europe, a journalism watchdog group said Friday. It was unclear what sentence was handed down to ISNA...

Jordan said Thursday it would reopen hotels and cafes, allow sporting events without spectators and shorten a night curfew as of Saturday, further easing its coronavirus lockdown that has hit the aid-dependent economy. But Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz told reporters that while Jordan had...

 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged allies Thursday to step up funding to defeat Daesh (ISIS), despite a budget crunch caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The United States and Italy led a meeting of 31 nations on fighting the extremists, held virtually due to precautions to stop the...

US Navy veteran Michael White has been freed and left Iran nearly two years after his arrest, his mother said Thursday, following the US release of an Iranian scientist. "I am blessed to announce that the nightmare is over, and my son is safely on his way home," Joanne White said in a...

Iran announced 3,574 new coronavirus infections Thursday, its highest daily count since the outbreak began in February. It was the fourth straight day that the daily caseload had topped 3,000. The previous high was 3,186, recorded on March 30, at the height of the initial outbreak....

Libya's internationally recognized leader will meet President Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey Thursday as the allies seek to lock in recent gains on the battlefield near Tripoli ahead of a new round of talks on a potential ceasefire. Turkey began providing military support to Fayez al Serraj's...

Unrest over the death of a black man in U.S. police custody has reversed the usual tide of diplomacy over human rights, as nations stung by American criticism over the years return fire and accuse Washington of double standards. China and Iran, described respectively in the past as...

Israel's parliament suspended sessions scheduled for Thursday after a lawmaker tested positive for the coronavirus, while some schools shut down anew amid worries about fresh outbreaks. Having moved aggressively against the global pandemic in March and seen a tailing-off of new cases,...

The spread of novel coronavirus has accelerated again this month in Iran which Wednesday officially confirmed over 3,000 new cases for a third consecutive day. The country has recorded an additional 3,134 cases, health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour told state television, bringing...

Most Israelis think their government's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank will spark a Palestinian uprising, but around half favour going ahead anyway, a poll showed Wednesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to take steps towards annexation as soon as July 1,...

Mosques reopened for daily prayers and children returned to nursery schools Wednesday in an easing of coronavirus restrictions in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas Islamist-run enclave, whose borders are tightly controlled by Israel and Egypt, has recorded 61 confirmed infection cases, all in...

The police killing of unarmed African-American George Floyd shows the "true face" of the United States and its oppression of the peoples of the world, including its own, Iran's supreme leader said Wednesday. "The fact that a policeman has cold-bloodedly pressed his knee on the throat of a...

Jordan’s foreign minister warned Tuesday of serious consequences in terms of his country’s relations with Tel Aviv and for peace in the region if Israel annexes parts of the West Bank and Jordan Valley.    According to a statement from Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, Ayman Safadi...

 Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari has arrived back in Iran after being released from prison by its arch-foe the United States, Iranian media reported Wednesday. The Tasnim, ISNA and Mehr news agencies all carried the same photograph on their Telegram accounts of Asgari, wearing a face...

Iyad Hallak, a 32-year-old Palestinian man with autism, passed Israeli police every day to reach his special needs school in Jerusalem's Old City. Last week a police officer who believed Hallak was armed shot him dead, leaving his family searching for answers and igniting widespread grief...

An independent British investigator looking into allegations that UK soldiers committed war crimes in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 said Tuesday that all but one of the thousands of complaints had been dropped. The Service Prosecuting Authority director Andrew Cayley told BBC radio that it was...

Turkey issued detention warrants for 118 people, mostly members of the military and security forces, suspected of links to the network that Ankara says was behind a 2016 coup attempt, the Istanbul prosecutor's office said Tuesday. Authorities have carried out a sustained crackdown on...

An Iranian scientist imprisoned in the U.S. after being acquitted in a federal trade secrets case is on his way back to Iran after being deported, the country’s foreign minister said Tuesday. Sirous Asgari was in the air on a flight back to Iran, Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an Instagram...

Mosques in the Gaza Strip will reopen to worshippers as of Wednesday after more than two months of closure due to the spread of coronavirus, the Ministry of Religious Affairs said on Monday. "All mosques will reopen for prayers," ministry undersecretary Abdel-Hadi al-Agha told a press...