The top US military officer has pressed Afghanistan's Taliban to reduce violence in a rare meeting as outgoing President Donald Trump seeks to hasten the end of the nearly 20-year war. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met separately with Taliban...

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday urged world's rich nations to make stronger contributions to make coronavirus vaccine available to everyone on the planet. "It is not with vaccine nationalism that we are going to defeat the COVID, it is with international cooperation," he...

When Abdullah boarded an inflatable boat crammed with fellow migrants in February he thought he would finally reach Europe after braving the dangers of a Sahara crossing and Libya’s civil war. The 27-year-old from Niger knew the voyage ahead was risky. The Mediterranean waters between Libya...

An annual Gulf Arab summit, usually held in December, will be hosted by Saudi Arabia on Jan. 5, Kuwait's foreign minister said on Thursday in remarks published on the ministry website. Sources familiar with the matter had told Reuters that the gathering would be pushed to next month while...

A city court in Moscow fined Google for 3 million rubles ($41,000) on Thursday for showing extremist, pornographic, and suicidal content in search results in Russia. This is the biggest penalty Google has ever faced in Russia. The amount was increased because, despite the previous warnings,...

The EU on Thursday announced the finalizing contracting process of €6 billion ($7.3 billion) in aid for refugees hosted by Turkey, focused on the 4 million Syrian refugees who since 2011 fled the war in their home country for safe shelter in Turkey. “The EU Delegation to Turkey signs the...

EU negotiator Michel Barnier said Thursday that talks with Britain on a post-Brexit trade deal were progressing but that there had been no breakthrough. "Good progress, but last stumbling blocks remain. We will only sign a deal protecting EU interests and principles," Barnier tweeted after...

Reviving Iran's nuclear deal under U.S. President-elect Joe Biden would require striking a new agreement setting out how Iran's breaches should be reversed, U.N. atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said. Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20, has said the United States will rejoin the deal "if...

A Lebanese military court has sentenced famous artist-turned fugitive Fadel Shaker to 22 years imprisonment with hard labour. According to the official National News Agency, two rulings were issued in absentia. The first sentence originally handed down in 2017 for 15 years was for...

 Saudi Arabia kicked off a three-phase Covid-19 vaccination programme Thursday, with the health minister among those inoculated after the first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in the kingdom. Along with Health Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah, a woman in a wheelchair and...

 French President Emmanuel Macron tested positive for COVID-19 Thursday, following a week when he has met with numerous European leaders. The French and Spanish prime ministers are among those self-isolating because they had recent contact with him. Macron took a test "as soon as the...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia supplied 100,000 tonnes of wheat to Syria as humanitarian aid since the start of 2020 and plans to ship more, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday. Syria’s economy has been strained by a complex, multi-sided conflict now in its...

The Syrian security has arrested a doctor and three nurses in the past few days for diagnosing new Covid-19 cases without referring to the Health Ministry, local monitoring group said Thursday. The Daraa Martyrs Documentation office recorded the raiding of the homes of the 4 healthcare...

A Syrian health organization on Thursday has mourned doctor Mohamed Al-Youssef who died from coronavirus in Turkish hospitals. The SAMS medical relief organization laments the loss of Al-Youssef, 36, who worked with them in the opposotion-held areas in northern Syria as a director of...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday he was certain the incoming U.S. administration will return to its nuclear deal commitments and lift crippling sanctions on his country. “I have no doubt that the three-year resistance of the Iranian people will persuade the future American...

Beijing will welcome an international team of COVID-19 investigators due to travel to China in January, said the World Health Organization (WHO), which is leading the mission. China has strongly opposed calls for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, saying such...

Ten years since the intoxicating early days of Tunisia's revolution, hopes for a better future lie crushed, and in the rural town where it began, few are celebrating. It was in Sidi Bouzid that Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit and vegetable salesman angered by police harassment, set himself alight...

US intelligence agencies have warned a "significant" cyber attack on several federal departments uncovered over the weekend remains ongoing as the government rushes to assess the extent of the breach. "This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full...

Turkey’s health minister gave an evaluation of the process and effectiveness of a domestic vaccine for COVID-19 after meeting with the Coronavirus Scientific Committee early Thursday via video link.  The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take lives in Turkey and throughout the world, and...

Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia should pull out from war-torn Yemen where 24 million people, half of whom are children need urgent aid, experts said.  On March 2011, popular uprising erupted in Yemen against Ali Abdullah Salih who ruled the country for over 20 years....