The cold has killed close to 30 children in two months among the civilians who have been fleeing the last jihadist pocket in eastern Syria, the United Nations said Thursday. The World Health Organization said it was extremely concerned by the conditions for those who make it to Al-Hol,...

Moscow and Washington have made "no progress" in talks on saving a key arms control treaty, a Russian diplomat said on Thursday, with the United States expected to begin withdrawal this weekend. Russian and US officials had met on the sidelines of a meeting of the five permanent members of...

The world's biggest shipbuilder, South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries, has reached a deal to acquire a majority stake in ailing number two Daewoo from the government, Seoul said Thursday. The world's top three shipbuilders are South Korean -- Samsung Heavy ranks third -- but the industry...

The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies. Rescuers working in Djibouti's northeastern Obock region continued to recover...

In the former jihadist bastion of Hajin in eastern Syria, 50-year-old Khaled Abed shouts at the top of his lungs amid the rubble, asking why he can't go home. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) expelled the Islamic State group from the town last month, but it has since forbidden...

Madrid on Thursday demanded the immediate release of journalists working for the Spanish news agency EFE who were arrested in Venezuela as part of a crackdown by Caracas on foreign media. The Spanish government "strongly condemns" the detention in Caracas of four members of a team from...

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Thursday he believed sanctions against Venezuelan "kleptocrats" could be a way to pressure President Nicolas Maduro to call new elections. He said he would raise the issue later in the day with his European Union counterparts at a meeting in...

Retired Israeli general Benny Gantz's new party has surged in opinion polls since his maiden speech, positing him as the most significant political threat to incumbent premier Benjamin Netanyahu. But despite the leap in the number of seats his Israel Resilience party is expected to win in...

The Yellow Vest protests in the French capital Paris, which have been continuing since mid-November, have spread to southern and western parts of the country. The protests are regarded as the greatest crisis since President Emmanuel Macron has assumed his office; although he organized...

The European Union ended 2018 with an unemployment rate of 6.6 percent, the EU's statistical office reported on Thursday. On a yearly basis, the unemployment rate in the EU fell 0.6 percentage points compared to 7.2 percent in December, 2017. "Eurostat estimates that 16.3 million men...

Mohamed ElBaradei, who briefly served as vice-president following Egypt’s 2013 military coup, has decried the country’s human rights situation under President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi's rule.  In a Thursday tweet, ElBaradei, who served as director-general of the International Atomic Energy...

A team of former U.S. government intelligence operatives working for the United Arab Emirates hacked into the iPhones of activists, diplomats and rival foreign leaders with the help of a sophisticated spying tool called Karma, in a campaign that shows how potent cyberweapons are proliferating...

A U.S.-born anchor for Iran’s state-run Press TV arrived in Iran Wednesday after 10 days of detention in the United States, Press TV reported. The anchor, Marzieh Hashemi, testified as a material witness in an undisclosed federal investigation, a U.S. federal court order said last Thursday...

The family of a Navy cryptologist who was killed in Syria earlier this year in a suicide bombing is fighting an obscure regulation they say derailed her education plans and ultimately led to her fifth combat deployment in the war-torn country. Chief Petty Officer Shannon Mary Kent, 35,...

China will relax rules on IPOs for a planned Nasdaq-style tech board in Shanghai as it seeks to encourage start-ups to list at home after losing the likes of Alibaba and Baidu to Wall Street. Existing rules on initial public offerings ban companies from listing unless they have a track...

Malaysia on Thursday installed a new king, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, after the last monarch abdicated in a historic first following his reported marriage to a Russian ex-beauty queen. In a ceremony steeped in pomp and centuries of tradition, the sports-loving sultan, dressed in...

The Kabul government is steadily losing its grip over parts of Afghanistan even as American forces intensify their air campaign against insurgent groups, a US government watchdog said Thursday. The latest grim assessment of Afghanistan's security situation comes as the US pursues talks with...

enezuelan authorities have detained five foreign journalists covering the standoff with opposition forces seeking the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro. Two others, from Chile, were deported as the crisis spilled over to hit journalists covering the oil-rich but economically crippled...

Saudi Arabia has ended a sprawling crackdown on corruption ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that it said had recovered more than $106 billion through settlements with scores of senior princes, ministers and top businessmen. A royal court statement said the government had summoned...

Nearly 5,000 people leave Venezuela every day, the UN Refugee Agency said Wednesday. Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said at a press conference at UN headquarters that Venezuelans are leaving the country because of "instability...