In a community hall in the Spanish region of Catalonia, two independence activists take the stage against a backdrop of red and yellow striped Catalan flags: a Syrian-born tourist guide and a Spanish member of parliament born in Uruguay. With barely three months to go before an independence...

Two protesters, both aged 20, died Thursday during anti-government demonstrations in separate regions of Venezuela, bringing the total deaths in more than two months of protests to 72, officials said. Prosecutors said they were investigating the death of Jose Perez, a student in the western...

Egyptian police have arrested dozens of activists in the face of opposition calls for protests on Friday after parliament passed a controversial agreement to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia. A lawyer working to release the activists said about 50 had been arrested across Egypt since...

  (Zaman Al Wasl)- Residents of Maarrat al-Numan in northern Idlib province on Friday went to streets, for the third time, protesting the mounting abuses of Tahrir al-Sham, the powerful Islamist alliance that led by Jaish Fateh al-Sham, the former al-Qaeda branch in Syria, local reporter...

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was under mounting pressure Friday over allegations that he used his influence to help a friend in a business deal after two official reports appeared to back up the claims. Abe, in power since late 2012, is in little danger of losing his job, but his...

The blast that killed eight people and injured dozens outside a kindergarten in eastern China was caused by a makeshift bomb and the assailant died in the explosion, authorities said Friday. The public security ministry said in a statement that the suspect was a 22-year-old man with health...

( The Wall Street Journal )- Southern Syria, once the quietest corner of the country’s multisided conflict, has unexpectedly become the most volatile flashpoint between America and Iran as the two countries vie for control. The U.S. military has moved mobile artillery-rocket launchers...

 New French President Emmanuel Macron's government reaffirmed on Friday its plan for electoral reform as the scale of the likely parliamentary majority it is set to win grew and predicted voter turnout shrank. Two opinion polls ahead of Sunday's second round of parliamentary elections...

Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike near the Syrian city of Raqqa last month. There was no initial independent confirmation that Baghdadi had been killed. The U.S.-led military coalition fighting against Islamic State...

The Sun newspaper on Friday listed 65 people who it said were still missing or feared dead in a London tower block fire which police said has left 17 people dead with the death toll expected to rise. When asked on Thursday whether the death toll could exceed 100, London police commander...

Kurdish fighter Habun Kamishli proudly recalled the cat and mouse game she played with an Islamic State suicide bomber in the Syrian town of Raqqa, where the militant group is likely to make its last stand. “I was standing on a rooftop yesterday as our forces advanced. I noticed he was...

Reporting by Shams el-Din Matoun (Eqtsad)- Many of the rich people of the city of Idlib managed to preserve their capital and trade under the conditions prevailing in the province. Their biggest concern remained is how to save money especially since the banks stopped working like other vital...

Syrian campaigners on Thursday named one of the victims of the devastating west London apartment block fire as Mohammed Alhajali, a 23-year-old refugee who lived on the 14th floor of the tower. Alhajali came to Britain with his brother in 2014 and was a civil engineering student at West...

Russia on Thursday accused the US-led coalition of deploying missiles against Syrian troops at a garrison in the east of the country, where rebels battling the Islamic State group are being trained. In a statement, the defence ministry said the "United States has moved two HIMARS multiple...

(The Independent)- The first victim of the horrific Grenfell fire has been named as Mohammed Alhajali – a Syrian refugee who came to Britain to seek a “better life”. A friend of the victim, who was studying civil engineering at the University of the West London, said he lived on the 14th floor...

Carrying suitcases, shopping bags and toddlers, thousands of refugees walked back home into Syria from Turkey on Thursday ahead of the Eid festival that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Turkey has taken in some 3 million Syrian migrants since the start of civil war in 2011,...

Air strikes hit rebel-held districts east of Damascus Thursday for the first time in weeks after shells landed in parts of the capital controlled by the Syrian government, a Reuters witness and a war monitor said. Fighting and bombardment around Damascus have eased significantly since...

An American university student, who was detained for 17 months in North Korea and had fallen into a coma during that time, has a "severe" neurological injury, a hospital official said on Thursday. Otto Warmbier, 22, is stable and receiving treatment at the University of Cincinnati Medical...

The U.S. State Department sanctioned on Thursday three ISIS members, including whom it said was a leading coordinator of the Nov. 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels. Mohammed Al Binali, who the State Department said left Bahrain in 2014 to join ISIS and has appeared in...

A U.N. humanitarian aid adviser for Syria says trucks are being prepared to ship polio vaccine into ISIS-held areas of Deir al-Zor governorate following confirmation of a "very dangerous" outbreak of the virus. Jan Egeland made the comments to reporters Thursday in the wake of the...