Iraq has ordered schools to teach pupils online, cancelled Friday prayers and suspended trade with major partner Iran, after confirming its first three deaths from the new coronavirus. Authorities stepped up attempts to contain COVID-19 on Thursday. With students scheduled to return to...

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday said they had reached a ceasefire agreement for the northwestern Syrian town of Idlib. "At 00.01 tonight, as in, from midnight, the ceasefire will be put in place," Erdogan said, following...

Israeli forces on Thursday demolished the homes of two Palestinian men accused of involvement in a bomb attack last year that killed an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank. The explosion on August 23, 2019, near a spring close to the Jewish settlement of Dolev, killed 17-year-old...

Lebanon’s crippling financial crisis could pose a grave threat to managing a coronavirus outbreak that has so far been kept in check but is expected to spread, according to senior health officials and medical importers. Lebanon faces a severe dollar shortage that has hit imports since...