Russians looked set Wednesday to overwhelmingly approve constitutional changes that will allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his two-decade rule until 2036. Early results from six days of national voting that ends Wednesday showed more than 70 percent of voters backing the reforms,...

Iraq's official death toll from the novel coronavirus has surpassed 2,000, the health ministry said Wednesday, as the war-ravaged country's crippled healthcare system struggles to cope. Health authorities announced there were now 51,524 cases of the COVID-19 disease in the country and that...

Thousands of Palestinians protested in Gaza on Wednesday against Israel's plans to annex parts of the West Bank, where Palestinian authorities announced a new five-day lockdown amid a worrying resurgence of the coronavirus. Israel's centre-right coalition government had set July 1 as the...

Tortured by the Syrian Bashar al-Assad regime in prison for seven years, Muhlis al-Drubi cannot forget the horrors he experienced, including having boiling water poured over him and reverse hanging. Accused of attending anti-regime protests, al-Drubi, 42, was detained in 2012. "Assad's...