COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — When the sun rises over Omaha Beach, revealing vast stretches of wet sand extending toward distant cliffs, one starts to grasp the immensity of the task faced by Allied soldiers on June 6, 1944, landing on the Nazi-occupied Normandy shore. Several ceremonies...

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey’s president promised Saturday to rescue the Marmara Sea from an outbreak of “sea snot” that is alarming marine biologists and environmentalists. A huge mass of marine mucilage, a thick, slimy substance made up of compounds released by marine organisms, has bloomed in...

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Gunmen killed at least 100 people in a northern Burkina Faso village, the government said Saturday, in what was the country’s deadliest attack in years. The attack took place Friday evening in Solhan village, in the Sahel’s Yagha province, government spokesman...

QAMISHLI, Syria (AP) — The Kurdish-led administration in Syria’s northeast handed over on Saturday to the Netherlands a Dutch woman, her two young sons, and a Dutch girl, who lived in a camp for families of alleged Islamic State militants. A delegation from the Netherlands led by special...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan is battling a brutal surge in COVID-19 infections as health officials plead for vaccines, only to be told by the World Health Organization that the 3 million doses the country expected to receive by April won’t be delivered until August. “We are in the...

In July 2018, when US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Putin did most of the talking. Much of it was about Syria. It was clear, Trump told his national security adviser John Bolton after an almost two-hour one-on-one session with his Russian...

Two members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were killed in an ambush set by ISIS in central Syria. ISIS ambushed a military convoy in al-Sukhnah area, east of Palmyra city in the eastern Homs countryside, killing IRGC military adviser Hassan Abdullahzadeh and his...

  Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and in the country's north, the U.N. humanitarian chief said, warning there's a risk that hundreds of thousands of people or more will die. Mark Lowcock said the economy has been destroyed along with businesses, crops and farms...

Five Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga troops were killed Saturday in a clash with fighters of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a senior Iraqi Kurdish official said. The PKK maintains rear-bases in northern Iraq which have come under renewed assault by Turkish forces since April....

Members of the Rohingya community expressed a cautious response to a declaration of Policy Position on the Rohingya in Rakhine State by the National Unity Government (NUG), an anti-coup shadow government in Myanmar. The exile government that was formed in April, issued the policy on Thursday...

Seventeen asylum seekers were rescued in the Dikili district of western Izmir province after they were pushed into Turkey’s territorial waters by Greek authorities. Turkish units detected the group in a rubber boat off Bademli district that was reportedly pushed back by Greek elements,...

For the past four months, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen has made several calls on Houthi rebels to end their offensive on the city of Marib, but things have yet to change. In his latest press conference on May 31 in the capital, Sana'a, Martin Griffiths again...

The closure of a final humanitarian border crossing into Syrian could cause “senseless cruelty” to millions of Syrians, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday, renewing a call for the U.N. Security Council to extend authorization for the delivery of cross-border humanitarian...

No normalisation without a political settlement is the EU's stance against the Syrian regime, but why are some of its member states still reopening their embassies? The European Union hasn't altered its position on Syria as it rules out any form of normalisation with its regime, saying that...

Iran's election watchdog the Guardian Council said on Friday that it may reconsider the barring of candidates from this month's presidential election after the Supreme Leader said some of them had been wronged. "The orders of the Supreme Leader are final and his ruling must be obeyed. The...

The head of the international chemical weapons watchdog told the U.N. Security Council that its experts have investigated 77 allegations against Syria, and concluded that in 17 cases chemical weapons were likely or definitely used. Fernando Arias called it "a disturbing reality" that eight...

Jordanian COVID-19 survivor Abdullah Bashiti still suffers disturbing flashbacks from his time in intensive care. One of the most vivid is a vision of his doctors holding their hands in prayer as he regained consciousness after a sudden critical oxygen lapse. The 38-year-old father of...

The Syria Response Coordination Team said Thursday that halting the delivery of aid to northern Syria will cause the area to collapse completely in humanitarian and economic terms.   The authorization mechanism for the entry of humanitarian aid across the Bab al-Hawa border crossing...

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has recorded at least 162 arbitrary arrests in May as thousands of students and state workers were forced to vote for Bashar al Assad for a fourth mandate.   Most of the arrests in Syria are carried out without any judicial warrant while the...

Facebook plans to end a contentious policy championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that exempted politicians from certain moderation rules on its site, according to several news reports. The company's rationale for that policy held that the speech of political leaders is inherently newsworthy...