Israel is revising military options for a possible clash with Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government braces for differences with the incoming U.S. administration on Iranian nuclear policy. U.S. President Donald Trump delighted...

TUNIS: Tunisia on Thursday commemorates the 10th anniversary since the flight into exile of iron-fisted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, pushed from power in a popular revolt that foreshadowed strife and civil war in the region, known as the Arab Spring. But there will be no festive...

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards official denied Thursday that recent Israeli strikes on eastern Syria led to any deaths, the Fars news agency reported. "This attack caused no human losses," Ahad Karimkhani, deputy political head of the Guards' foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, was...

Lebanon filed a complaint with the UN Security Council over the abduction of a Lebanese shepherd by Israeli soldiers from a border area earlier this week, local media reported Thursday.

Three Syrian businessmen with close ties to the Syrian government have been linked to the company that bought the explosive material that entered Beirut’s port in 2013 and fuelled a massive explosion in August that devastated parts of the Lebanese capital. The Syrian businessmen, George...

South Korea has sought Qatar's assistance to secure the release of a ship and its crew detained by Iran, local media reported on Thursday. Choi Jong-kun, South Korea’s first vice foreign minister, made the request during meetings with top Qatari officials, according to Yonhap News Agency....

A provisional 270 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been secured by the African Union (AU) for distribution across the continent. All of the doses will be used this year, promises current AU head South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. This is on top of 600 million doses already...

On 20 January, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. This will end four years of Donald Trump's foreign policy that has upset allies, angered friends and, sometimes, benefitted foes. However, amending foreign policy in the bitterly divided US will neither be easy...

In recent months, the areas controlled by the People's Protection Units (YPG) in the governorate of Deir ez-Zor (eastern Syria) have witnessed assassinations of notables and respected personalities on a near-daily basis. Local sources in the governorate revealed on Wednesday that they had...

News spread recently among popular and military quarters in the city of al-Bab in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo about the Syrian regime and its Russian-backed allies launching a military attack in the area, stirring anxiety and controversy among residents of the city, which is...

Israeli airstrikes on east Syria killed 57 regime forces and allied Iran-backed fighters in the deadliest such strikes since the start of the conflict, a war monitoring group said on Wednesday. The overnight raids against arms depots and military positions killed at least 14 Syrian regime...

BEIRUT (AP) — The World Bank approved a $246 million loan to Lebanon to provide emergency cash assistance to nearly 800,000 Lebanese reeling under the country’s compounded economic and health crises. The World Bank said in a statement late Tuesday the loan would also support the development...

(AP) — Indonesian President Joko Widodo received the first shot of a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine Wednesday after the government authorized it for emergency use and began efforts to vaccinate millions of people across the vast archipelago in one of the world’s most populous countries....

Republicans offered only modest reproach when President Donald Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides of a white supremacist rally. They stayed in line when Trump was caught pressuring a foreign leader and later defended his handling of a deadly pandemic. But with a sudden...

France said on Wednesday it had brought home seven children of French jihadists from northeast Syria, continuing a highly sensitive repatriation process begun after the toppling of the Islamic State (IS) group's self-proclaimed caliphate. The children, aged between two and 11 and...

The shift to home-working triggered by the coronavirus pandemic looks set to endure long-term, making it vital to protect employees' rights and avoid blurred lines between on-the-clock hours and personal time, the United Nations said Wednesday. Issues facing home workers and their...

More than 80 civilians died in the latest attack in an area of western Ethiopia that has seen recurring grisly violence in recent months, the national human rights commission said Wednesday.  "We've received information that over 80 civilians were killed on January 12 in an area...

Syrian women are the group most discriminated against among refugees in Turkey, and they also are victims of sexual and physical violence, the Yeni Yaşam news website reported, citing the Diyarbakır Bar Association. The bar association said more than half the refugees who applied to them for...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has publicly accused Iran's government of allowing the jihadist network al-Qaeda to establish a "new home base" there. "Unlike in Afghanistan, when al-Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, al-Qaeda today is operating under the hard shell of the Iranian regime's...

Iran’s military launched a short-range naval missile drill on Wednesday, Iranian state TV reported, at a time of high tension between arch foes Tehran and Washington. Iran has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East, regarding such weapons as an important deterrent and...