Indonesia's president has signed a moratorium on all new palm oil plantation development, an official said Thursday, in a move hailed by environmentalists. The moratorium effectively halts any new land being made available for plantations in the world's top producer of the edible...
A Toronto marketing company is looking to recruit six "cannabis enthusiasts" to test strains of pot and report back on their characteristics. So far, AHLOT says it has received more than 500 applications for the part-time positions -- an overwhelming number that is "slightly panicking"...
Memorandum on Stabilization of the Situation in the Idlib De-escalation Area The Republic of Turkey and the Russian Federation, as guarantors of the observance of the ceasefire regime in the Syrian Arab Republic. -guided by memorandum on creation of de-escalation areas in the...
An Indonesian city has ordered its top civil servants to visit their local mosque for dawn prayers or risk being sacked, underscoring the growing influence of religion across the world's biggest Muslim majority country. Senior bureaucrats in Palembang, co-host of last month's Asian...
Malaysia's leader-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim will seek to return to frontline politics by contesting a local election to become a lawmaker next month, officials said Thursday, a key step on his journey from prison to the premiership. Anwar, whose alliance won a shock election victory in...
British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt met on Thursday with embattled Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the first high-profile state visit to the country since the UN slammed her leadership over the Rohingya crisis. UN investigators this week released a scathing and meticulous report...
One of the world's biggest archaeological rescue operations was successfully concluded 50 years ago after a massive ancient Egyptian temple complex was dismantled and hoisted to higher ground to prevent its flooding by the damming of the Nile River. The groundbreaking UNESCO-led project...
A Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli fire in clashes near the border in southern Gaza late Wednesday, the health ministry in the enclave said. The ministry said Mumin Abu Ayeda, 15, was shot along the heavily-fortified border east of Rafah in southern Gaza. It said he...
(Zaman Al Wasl)- The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Lebanon has suspended food rations and aid for 8,000 Syrian families, activists said Wednesday. The UNHCR stressed that the financial assistance in Lebanon, sponsored by the World Food Program (WFP), has been allocated to...
The central bank of war-torn Yemen has raised interest rates on deposits to an all-time high of 27 percent in a bid to stabilize the plunging riyal that caused food prices to soar. The bank also raised interest rates on government bonds to 17 percent from 12 percent and banned taking out of...
Ian Buruma, the editor of the prestigious New York Review of Books, has left his position after being roundly criticized for publishing an essay condemned as insulting toward the #MeToo movement and victims of sexual abuse. Nicolas During, a spokesman for the literary magazine, told AFP...
British Prime Minister Theresa May urged fellow European Union leaders at an informal summit on Wednesday to follow her lead and adapt their Brexit negotiating stance to secure a good deal. However, before a dinner in the Austrian city of Salzburg, some of those leaders said key...
Thousands of residents of Syria's last major rebel bastion Idlib headed home within 48 hours of the announcement of a deal to avoid a government offensive to retake it, a war monitor said on Wednesday. As air strikes intensified earlier this month, the looming threat of a Russian-backed...
(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Kurdish-led Raqqa Local Council said Tuesday that 94 bodies have been been discovered at the Old Mosque in Raqqa, the one-time capital of the Islamic State's extremist group. Abdullah al-Arian, senior official in the c ouncil, said 68 bodies were...
At least 58 people were killed during a weekend of ethnic violence in Ethiopia's capital, an Amnesty International researcher told AFP on Wednesday, citing a figure more than double the government estimate of 23 dead. Another source involved in the investigation, who saw and counted the...
Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday that U.S. accusations that Russia helped North Korea illegally obtain fuel through transfers at sea were not backed up by evidence. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused Russia on Monday of "cheating" on U.N....
(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Syrian-Palestinian refugee, Mohammed Khamis has managed to prove his brilliance among the documentary filmmakers in Sweden and to be creative in a field that is known to require a high level of proficiency, craftsmanship and technicality without having studied...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government drew widespread criticism Wednesday for a compromise deal that defused a blistering coalition row centred on the head of the domestic intelligence service. Merkel and the two other party chiefs decided Tuesday to relieve Hans-Georg Maassen,...
Taxi driver Fahed Othman has been waiting to fill up at a petrol station in the Yemeni capital for two days, but when his turn finally comes the fuel has run out. "I don't have any other choice but to wait," the 35-year-old told AFP wearily. Hundreds of Yemenis queue up at...
led the country with an iron fist from 1979 to 2017, stepped down and was replaced by Lourenco. "Angola and Portugal are emerging from a difficult phase. What's important is that both sides are able to identify the obstacles and troublesome elements in order to overcome them," Angola's...
