PARIS - French authorities announced Saturday that children six and older will have to wear masks in indoor places open to the public as new cases of the highly contagious omicron variant surge past 200.000 for the fourth consecutive day. By lowering the age of children obligated to wear...

400 migrants disembarked at the southern Italian port of Pozzallo on Saturday, after rescued by the German charity Sea Watch over the past week. The crew picked up a total of 446 people in five separate operations, but several were evacuated for medical treatment while waiting for the...

Two children and a woman have been killed and 10 others injured in Russian airstrikes in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, an opposition-held area where a truce is supposed to be in place. Sources in the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) said that three civilians, including a woman and...

 Chanting anti-American slogans, hundreds of people rallied in the Iraqi capital Saturday to mark the anniversary of the killing of a powerful Iranian general and a top Iraqi militia leader in a U.S. drone strike. The crowd called for the expulsion of remaining American forces from Iraq...

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — A stampede at a popular Hindu shrine in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed at least 12 people and injured 13 others on New Year’s Day, officials said. An investigation has been ordered into what caused the stampede early Saturday at the Mata Vaishnav Devi shrine, where...

Dynamics of geopolitics and Turkiye, Russia, US relations will decide the future of the embattled nation Peace is a relative term in a battle zone. Like Syria in 2021. After years of a crippling war, the devastated country found some breathing space after a proposed military operation by...

The war in Syria marked its ten-year anniversary in 2021, another grim milestone for the country that appears marching onward into terminal decline. While levels of violence in 2020 remained relatively low compared to other years, for many in Syria the situation is as grim as ever....

Paphos, Cyprus – Mustafa*, his wife and their four children felt a sense of relief last summer as they entered a condominium overlooking the shimmering Mediterranean Sea. After 10 years of hardship, during which they first fled Syria’s brutal war and then Lebanon’s relentless economic...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty White, whose saucy, up-for-anything charm made her a television mainstay for more than 60 years, whether as a man-crazy TV hostess on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or the loopy housemate on “The Golden Girls,” has died. She was 99. White’s death was confirmed Friday by...

LONDON — New figures from Britain’s official statistics body estimate that about 1 in 25 people in private households in England had COVID-19 in the week before Christmas, as the highly transmissible omicron variant spread rapidly across the country. The number jumped from 1 in 45 in...

Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the coronavirus pandemic were — again — the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022. New Year's Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a...

Good riddance to 2021. Let 2022 bring fresh hope. That was a common sentiment Friday as people around the world got ready to welcome in the new year. In many places, plans for New Year's Eve celebrations were muted or cancelled for the second straight year due to a surge of coronavirus...

An estimated 580 homes, a hotel and a shopping center have burned and tens of thousands of people were evacuated in wind-fueled wildfires outside Denver, officials said Thursday evening. Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said only one injury has been reported, but didn’t rule out finding out...

Bahrain appointed on Thursday its first ambassador to Syria in more than a decade, the island nation's state news agency reported, the latest sign of a stepped-up outreach to Damascus by Gulf Arab countries. The decree by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa came as more Arab countries...

Satellite images taken this week over the Syrian port of Latakia show the smoldering wreckage after a reported Israeli missile strike, hours after firefighters contained a massive blaze. The raid launched from the Mediterranean Sea Tuesday was among the biggest launched by Israel into Syria,...

pposition Victory Party (Zafer Partisi) Chairperson Ümit Özdağ came under fire for interrogating the Syrian-born owner of a jewelry shop in Turkey’s western Izmir province. In a video posted on his Twitter account on Monday, Özdağ enters the shop and starts asking the owner about his name,...

Saudi King Salman said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia was concerned about Iran's lack of cooperation with the international community on its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. King Salman bin Abdulaziz said in an address to the kingdom's advisory Shura Council that he hoped Iran would...

(Reuters) - South Korea's Samsung Group is in talks to buy U.S. drugmaker Biogen Inc (BIIB.O), Korea Economic Daily reported on Wednesday, citing investment banking sources. The report said Biogen approached Samsung to buy its shares, which could be valued at more than $42 billion. The...

CAIRO (AP) — Libya failed to hold its first presidential election as planned this month, a major blow to international efforts to end a decade of chaos in the oil-rich Mediterranean country. The postponement of the Dec. 24 vote has opened up uncertainty over what comes next in the tenuous...

(Reuters) - France is seeing a "tsunami" of COVID-19 infections, with 208,000 cases reported over the past 24 hours, a new national and European record, Health Minister Olivier Veran told lawmakers on Wednesday. France has been breaking infection records repeatedly over the past few days,...