Restaurants and bars will close early in Tokyo and a dozen other areas across Japan beginning Friday as the country widens COVID-19 restrictions due to the omicron variant, which has caused cases to surge to new highs in metropolitan areas. The restraint, which is something of a pre-state...

Islamic State militants attacked a prison in al-Hasaka in an attempt to free prisoners belonging to the group who had mutinied, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement on Thursday. Islamic State "sleeper cells ... infiltrated from the surrounding neighbourhoods and...

At least one child was killed in northern Syria this week when a storm blanketed tented camps in snow and brought freezing temperatures, compounding the misery of thousands of people displaced by the Mediterranean country's decade-long war. The child died and its mother was in intensive...

A rocket attack on a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killed six civilians and wounded over a dozen people on Thursday, Syrian rescuers and a war monitor said. Both blamed U.S-backed Syrian Kurdish forces for the attack.  The town of Afrin has been...