The United Nations Friday approved a nearly $600 million cut to its peacekeeping budget following pressure from the United States to reduce funding to the world body. The General Assembly approved by consensus the annual budget expected to total $7.3 billion, down from the current $7.87...

Germany is girding itself for possible cyber attacks on next week's G20 summit in Hamburg, by hacker groups or cells linked to foreign governments, its top cyber official told Reuters. Arne Schoenbohm, president of Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), said authorities had...

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces pressed Islamic State fighters holding out in Mosul's Old City on Friday, while in Syria the militant group launched a counter-attack against an alliance of militias trying to oust it from its de facto capital of Raqqa. In Iraq, dozens of civilians poured out of...

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia aims to "liberate" the area between Azaz and Jarablus held by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels, a YPG commander said in a statement. Commander Sipan Hemo did not give a timeline or details of plans to take the area, which was seized by the Turkey-backed rebels last...

President Donald Trump declared that the US had run out of patience with North Korea over its nuclear drive Friday as he welcomed South Korea's new leader Moon Jae-In to talks at the White House. While Moon has been arguing for greater engagement with Pyongyang as the best way to put the...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump amid tensions over Washington's decision to arm Syrian Kurdish forces fighting the Daesh (ISIS), a Turkish official said Friday. Mahir Unal, a spokesman for Erdogan's ruling party, said the two leaders spoke by...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the report by an international chemical weapons watchdog that confirmed a chemical attack in Syria doesn't back claims by the U.S. and its allies that the substance was dropped from aircraft. President Bashar Assad and his ally Russia have denied the...

( Expression )- MOSUL. Falah Aziz says he's cut the head off 50 living people and killed 130 people in total. He calls himself the beheader. "Just that feeling, I can't explain how at ease I am with it," is his response when asked what it feels like to cut someone's head off." He is Iraqi and...

Israel's military says aircraft struck a Syrian military post that earlier fired a mortar into the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan Heights. It said the Syrian shell caused no injuries Friday, the latest in several such incidents of this week. The fire was spillover from battles in the...

A war monitor said Daesh (ISIS) regained control over most of the industrial district in Syria's Raqqa Friday, but the alliance fighting it denied that while acknowledging there was an extremist counter attack in the east of the city. The assault marked Daesh's first sustained effort to...

The White House envoy coordinating the US-led coalition fighting Daesh (ISIS) was holding talks in Ankara Friday a day after visiting a Syrian Kurdish militia deemed by Turkey to be "terrorists". The visit by Brett McGurk, which was not announced in advance, comes a month after Turkish...

The German government said it would welcome Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan as an important guest during the meeting of G20 leading economies in Hamburg from July 7-8, despite Berlin's decision Thursday to bar other public events by Erdogan. Spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters he had...

Germany's parliament voted Friday to punish social media giants with fines of up to 50 million euros ($57 million) if they systematically fail to remove illegal hate speech.  Berlin took the measure, one of the toughest in the world, after a surge in racist and incendiary speech online,...

Iraqi government forces attacked Islamic State's remaining redoubt in Mosul's Old City on Friday, a day after formally declaring the end of the insurgents' self-declared caliphate and the capture of the historic mosque which symbolized their power. Dozens of civilians fled in the direction...

Nearly half a million Syrians have returned to their homes so far this year, including 440,000 internally displaced people and more than 31,000 returning from neighbouring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Most returned to Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, it said,...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Militants of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have attacked a group of displaced people from Tabqa after they demanded to be allowed to return to their homes in the town of al-Sweidiya. The news comes as videos are leaked of PYD forces torturing civilians to extract...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Two civilians killed and ten more wounded on Friday in artillery shelling on northern towns of Homs province, local reporter said. The bombardment hit Taer Mala, Talbiseh and al-Ghanto in the northern countryside. The regime checkpoints also launched mortar...

Sheen Ibrahim's track record fighting ultra-hardline militants explains U.S. President Donald Trump's policy of arming Syrian Kurds like her as he seeks to eradicate Islamic State. It also highlights the risks. Taught by her brother to fire an AK-47 at 15 and encouraged by her mother to...

The United States imposed sanctions on two Chinese citizens and a shipping company on Thursday for helping North Korea's nuclear and missile programs and accused a Chinese bank of laundering money for Pyongyang. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the actions were designed to cut off...

( The Guardian )- The senseless destruction of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul last week is not only a monumental loss for the people of Iraq but for all humanity. The 12th century place of worship and its famed leaning minaret were landmarks in the Old City and featured on local currency....