The Taliban said Friday they have agreed to suspend attacks in southern Afghanistan that have displaced thousands this week - but only after the U.S. promised to halt airstrikes in support of Afghan forces in the latest fighting in Helmand province. The development came after a meeting with...

An exiled Iran opposition group said Friday it had uncovered a secret new military site run by a shadowy defence ministry research unit which they fear is being used for testing in the Iranian nuclear programme. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said that work on the site in...

Armenian and Azeri forces fought new clashes on Friday, defying hopes of ending nearly three weeks of fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Turkey for inflaming the situation by arming the Azeris. The worst outbreak of violence in the...

Greece and Cyprus pushed for a tougher European Union response to Turkey’s natural gas exploration in contested Mediterranean waters at an EU summit on Friday, after Ankara restarted operations of a survey ship. Two weeks after their last summit where leaders discussed economic sanctions,...

Neymar will sit out Paris Saint-Germain's Ligue 1 game away at Nimes on Friday, hot on the heels of his starring role on international duty for Brazil. The world's most expensive player scored a hat-trick for his country in a 4-2 win in Peru in 2022 World Cup qualifying. That match in...

“They sent us directly to the front lines. The situation is terrible. Terrible. There is fighting every day. We are charged with storming. There is no rest. There are many men missing and we can’t get to them,” explained Abdel Basit, a Syrian mercenary speaking from Azerbaijan (for their...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday it was now time to prepare for a no-trade deal Brexit as the European Union had refused to negotiate seriously and that unless Brussels changed course there would not be an agreement. A tumultuous “no deal” finale to the United Kingdom’s five-year...

Planes carrying prisoners to be exchanged by Yemen's warring parties took off Friday on the second day of an operation to return about 1,000 men home and help build momentum for a new push to end a catastrophic war. A Saudi-led military coalition, which supports the internationally...

Former Mexican defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who led the country’s army for six years under ex-President Enrique Pe?a Nieto, has been arrested on drug trafficking and money laundering charges at Los Angeles International Airport, U.S. and Mexican sources said Thursday. Two...

At the plush Armani hotel in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower, a rabbi switches on the stoves at what is billed as Dubai's first kosher restaurant. With the ink still fresh on the United Arab Emirates' landmark normalisation accord with Israel, restaurants and...

One of the targets of large cyber attacks on two Iranian government institutions this week was the electronic infrastructure of the country’s ports, an Iranian news agency reported on Friday. The government’s Information Technology Organization on Thursday reported the hacking of two...

 “You have to thank Trump” posters in Hebrew suddenly started appearing on minibuses in Tel Aviv this week, as Republican ads brought the race for the White House onto the streets of Israel. Democrats are also targeting American-Israelis. They arranged a 40% discount with the courier...

Vietnam's 2020 Formula One Grand Prix has been cancelled, organisers said on Friday, but there was no word on whether the race would take place next year. Planned for early April, the Grand Prix in Hanoi was set to be the third race of the season and the first ever held in the communist...

The number of people worldwide who have succumbed to the novel coronavirus exceeded 1.1 million Thursday, according to Worldometer, which compiles COVID-19 data from around the globe.  Its website reported that the death toll from the virus has reached 1,101,420, while the number of...

At the 27th edition of the Bayeux Clavadoes-Normandy Awards that took place on October 9 and 10, Syrian photographer and activist Anas Alkharboutli, from the German agency DPA, won the Young Reporter Trophy for his report entitled “The War in Syria.”  Instituted in 1994 on the annual...

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) revealed on Thursday the biased  practices and methods  of the regime-run Counter-Terrorism Court, noting that at least 10,767 persons still face trial in Counter-Terrorism Court, which has heard nearly 91,000 cases and ordered 3,970 cases...

Bombing of civilians by Syrian and Russian armed forces during a campaign against the last rebel bastion in northwest Syria may amount to crimes against humanity, US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Thursday. The global rights group said it investigated dozens of "unlawful"...

The Epidemiological Surveillance Laboratory of the Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU) has reported 107 new infected cases of Covid-19 in the liberated areas in northern Syria, bringing the number of cases so far to 1927. Twenty cases of recovery have been registered, with a total of 1024...

 London, the world’s international financial capital, will enter a tighter COVID-19 lockdown from midnight on Friday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson seeks to tackle a swiftly accelerating second coronavirus wave. The respiratory pandemic, which emerged in China last year and has killed...

The main focus of Middle East peace efforts should be to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, the Saudi foreign minister said on Thursday in a comment suggesting that Israeli-Saudi normalization is unlikely any time soon. “I believe that the focus now needs to be...