German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to the southern Russian city of Sochi on May 18 to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin, the RIA news agency said Monday citing a Kremlin aide. Yury Ushakov, an adviser to Putin, also said the Russian president would travel to Vienna on...

Egypt is holding political prisoners in "prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement" that amounts to "torture," an international rights group said Monday. In a new report, Amnesty International said dozens of detained human rights activists, journalists and members of the opposition...

Lebanon held on Sunday its first parliamentary elections in nine years, as citizens expressed cautious optimism that the country's rigid, oft-deadlocked sectarian political system could be swayed. Behind the scenes, however, one of the world's leading powers has quietly eyed the small state as...

The Yemeni government on Sunday decried the deployment of Emirati troops on the strategic island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea.   In a statement cited by the official Saba news agency, the government said the difference between it and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) “revolves...