Fighting in northwestern Syria has displaced nearly 140,000 people since February, the UN said on Wednesday, as the regime and its ally Russia have stepped up their bombardment. "Since February, over 138,500 women, children and men have been displaced from northern Hama and southern Idlib,"...

Britain's richest man Jim Ratcliffe refused to rule out on Tuesday, an attempt to buy Premier League club Chelsea from Roman Abramovich. Ratcliffe is already involved in football after purchasing Swiss side Lausanne in 2017, while his company has also expressed an interest in French outfit...

Iran said Wednesday it hopes to have good relations with arch-rival Saudi Arabia and its allies, and called for an end to their bitter dispute with Gulf neighbour Qatar. Riyadh broke off relations with Tehran in 2016 after protesters angry at its execution of a top Shiite cleric torched its...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed has signed a law on fast-tracked Russian passports for Ukrainians who live in rebel-held territories in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Wednesday. Such plans have drawn rebuke from the European Union and Kiev.

French police fired tear gas to push back masked demonstrators in central Paris on Wednesday as thousands of people used an annual May Day rally to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s policies. Labor unions and so-called “yellow vest” protesters were on the streets across France...

Israel and the United States are putting the financial squeeze on the Palestinian Authority, where opposition to a long-awaited U.S. peace plan and anger over Israeli sanctions remain strong. Analysts see steep cuts in U.S. aid to the Palestinians over the past year as an attempt to draw...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reiterated on Wednesday that Tehran will continue selling its oil despite U.S. sanctions and said Washington’s policy of putting pressure on Iran would fail in practice. Rouhani called the U.S. decision to try to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero a...

The Syrian government has raised the price it pays farmers for their wheat after the smallest crop in three decades in 2018, a pro-government newspaper said on Wednesday. Syria is expected to import around 1.5 million tonnes of mainly Russian wheat this year with local wheat procurement...

A suspected bomb attack by Maoist rebels killed 16 Indian elite commandos on Wednesday, police said, the latest incident of election-time violence in a decades-long insurgency. "Maoists attacked a team of commandos travelling in a private vehicle to inspect an earlier attack. So far 16 men...

Three civilians have been killed and six others injured in regime attacks on residential areas in Syria’s northern de-escalation zones, local sources said on Wednesday.  The overnight airstrikes and shelling targeted Idlib province's towns of Termela, Keferin, Mintar as well as Hama...

A man in Christchurch was charged in court on Wednesday with possessing explosives, ammunition and offensive weapons a day after police found a suspected explosive device in the city where 50 Muslims were killed in attacks on two mosques in March. Police said the 33-year-old suspect had no...

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s election victory delivered a shot in the arm for Europe’s struggling left, which fears a surge by the right in this month’s European parliament elections. The Spanish Socialists’ gains on Sunday were a relief for their counterparts elsewhere on the...

Arab states support a transition in Sudan that balances the ambitions of the people with institutional stability, a senior United Arab Emirates minister said Wednesday. "Totally legitimate for Arab states to support an orderly & stable transition in Sudan. One that carefully calibrates...

 Amnesty International called on Yemen's Houthi movement, which controls the capital of Sanaa, to free 10 journalists held for nearly four years on what the rights group described as trumped-up spying charges. The Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the internationally recognized Yemeni...

China-based Huawei outsold Apple's iPhones in the first quarter of this year, seizing the California company's second place spot in a tightening smartphone market dominated by Samsung, a tracker said Tuesday. A total of 310.8 million smartphones were shipped globally during the first three...

A new round of peace talks between the Taliban and the US starts Wednesday in Qatar, an official for the insurgents said, as the foes seek an end of America's longest war. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told AFP that "the sixth round of talks between Islamic Emirate and the US will...

The US-led NATO mission in Afghanistan has stopped releasing key data on how much of the country falls under insurgent or government control, a US watchdog said Wednesday, the latest war metric to fall from public view. NATO's Resolute Support mission previously gave a running tally on who...

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced Tuesday that it provided more than 250,000 displaced people in Yemen with basic items in the first quarter of this year. “The UNHCR led @YEShelterCCCM is responding and has reached over 250,000 people between Jan-March 2019 with basic household items...

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has called for protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s government on May Day. "I am calling on the armed forces to continue their march in Operation Freedom. Tomorrow, May 1, we will continue…across all of Venezuela. We will be on the streets,"...

Shelling of areas in northwestern Syria in the past three days has damaged a medical centre and put two hospitals out of service, the United Nations said on Tuesday. "The UN is deeply disturbed by three separate reported attacks on hospitals and health facilities in northwestern Syria,...