BOSTON (AP) — The nation’s second-largest city called off its New Year’s Eve celebration Monday, and its smallest state re-imposed an indoor mask mandate as the omicron variant leaped ahead of other variants to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S. Omicron accounted for...

A Syrian refugee who fled to safety in Wales has told how he feared for his life after paying people smugglers to help him slip through the Turkish border and into the UK on a fake passport. Ammar Alhalaki was 26 and had just finished an engineering degree in Damascus when the government...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard staged a major military exercise across the country's south on Monday amid heightened tensions over Tehran's nuclear program, state TV reported. The Guard’s aerospace division, ground troops and naval forces joined in the five-day...

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The death toll following the strongest typhoon to batter the Philippines this year has risen to more than 200, with 52 other people still missing and several central towns and provinces grappling with downed communications and power outages and pleading for food and...

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has denied saying she was sexually assaulted, despite a November social media post attributed to her that accused a former top Communist Party official of forcing her into sex. The Lianhe Zaobao Chinese-language newspaper posted video of Peng it...

 Each month, hundreds of trucks heavy with fuel, cement and other goods cross a plowed no man’s land between Egypt and the Gaza Strip — and Hamas becomes stronger. Hamas collects tens of millions of dollars a month in taxes and customs at the crossing in the border town of Rafah,...

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Former leftist student leader Gabriel Boric will be under quick pressure from his youthful supporters to fulfill his promises to remake Chile after the millennial politician scored a historic victory in the country's presidential runoff election. Boric spent months...

 Lebanon could reach a preliminary agreement for financial support with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) between January and February, the local Al Jadeed TV said in a tweet on Sunday, citing the deputy prime minister. Saadeh Al-Shami was quoted by the broadcaster as saying a...

Six people, including four women, were killed in Syria’s Al-Hol camp for displaced people by Daesh in December, a Britain-based war monitor group said on Sunday. The camp, which is controlled by the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in northeastern Syria, houses about 62,000 displaced...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday the international community has not done enough to support Lebanon which is grappling with a dire economic crisis and is home to over 1 million Syrian refugees. The UN leader urged more support at the start of a three-day visit...

Sudanese took to the streets in the capital of Khartoum and elsewhere across the country for mass protests Sunday against an October military takeover and a subsequent deal that reinstated Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok but sidelined the movement. The demonstrations mark the third anniversary...

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The governor of an island province in the central Philippines said Sunday at least 63 people died in the devastation wrought by Typhoon Rai in more than half of the towns that managed to contact him, bringing the death toll in the strongest typhoon to batter the...

 Two Katyusha rockets hit Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, Iraq's state news agency reported early on Sunday citing security forces. One rocket was destroyed in the air by the C-RAM defense system and the other landed near the zone's festivals arena damaging two cars, the report added....

 Britain reported a surge in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant on Saturday which government advisors said could be just the tip of the iceberg, and London's mayor declared a "major incident" to help the city's hospitals cope. The number of Omicron cases recorded across the...

LONDON (AP) — A senior member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Cabinet resigned Saturday night, adding to a sense of disarray within a government that has faced rebellion from his own lawmakers and voters this week. Brexit Minister David Frost said in a letter to Johnson that he was...

TOKYO: Japan to provide grant aid worth 677 million yen (about US$6 million) to hospitals in Syria that have been damaged by the conflict. The aid will go into the “recovery and strengthening of lifesaving services by hospitals in areas severely damaged by the conflict,” the foreign...

Inside Jordan, Ali is a foreigner from the Gaza Strip. But outside, he is regarded as a Jordanian. “How?” the 35-year-old asks. “I’m stuck in between; not here, nor there.” Although he was born and raised in Jordan, Ali does not have Jordanian citizenship. His ID says he is a Palestinian...

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A powerful typhoon left at least 19 people dead, knocked down power and communications in entire provinces and wrought widespread destruction mostly in the central Philippines, officials said Saturday. A governor said her island province has been “leveled to the...

When suicide attackers and gunmen massacred crowds flocking to Kabul's airport, they also severed the escape route that Ali Rezaie hoped would take him to a new life abroad, far from the Taliban and their suspicions of well-educated, middle-class people who worked with foreigners in Afghanistan....

 The U.N. children’s agency said Friday the number of cases of child abuse and exploitation it has handled in Lebanon has nearly doubled in the past year amid the Mideast country’s economic meltdown. Lebanese are under enormous pressure as their country struggles with an unprecedented...