Tension was simmering Saturday on Greece's Lesbos island as thousands of asylum seekers remained homeless four days after Europe's largest migrant camp was destroyed by fire. Round-the-clock efforts to find temporary shelter for over 11,000 people including thousands of children were...

The top trending tweet Friday on Twitter in Bahrain was "Bahrainis against normalization" shortly after a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Bahrain was announced. "It is an illusion that the Bahraini people enter the tunnel of normalization. The Egyptian people up to the...

Libyans continued to protest worsening living conditions Friday in Benghazi, the base of warlord Khalifa Haftar.  Demonstrators took the streets for a second day once again to protest power cuts, corruption, the high cost of living, unpaid wages and water cuts. Local media...

The European Union stepped up planning for a "no-deal" Brexit Friday after Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government refused to revoke a plan to break the divorce treaty that Brussels says will sink four years of talks. Britain said explicitly this week that it plans to break international...

French Prime Minister Jean Castex warned Friday the country was seeing a "clear worsening" of the coronavirus pandemic, but said he would aim to avoid a new nationwide lockdown that would further hammer the economy. The number of new, confirmed COVID-19 cases in France rose by 9,406 Friday....

The Sahel region of Africa is a ticking "time bomb" of terrorism and organized crime, a Moroccan police chief told AFP Friday, a day after a suspected Daesh group-affiliated cell was busted. "It was a dangerous cell primed to go into action at any moment," Abdelhak Khiame, head of the...

An explosion in a battery workshop near the Iranian capital Friday killed one person, injured 10 others and damaged apartment buildings and cars, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported. The blast struck at 5:15 pm on the ground floor of a three-story residential building in Tehran...

Thousands of anti-Shiite protesters including demonstrators linked to Sunni extremists rallied in Pakistan's Karachi Friday, sparking fears that rising tensions between the religious groups may unleash a new round of sectarian violence. The rally follows a raft of blasphemy accusations...

Sudan has declared a state of emergency to avert economic downturn due to the dramatic fall of its local currency against the US dollar and soaring inflation. The decision -- reported by official news agency SUNA -- includes setting up emergency courts, enacting laws to protect the economy,...

 Bahrain is to normalize relations with Israel, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel's public broadcaster Kan said in a tweet Friday, without citing sources. Another Israeli reporter, Raphael Ahren of the Times of Israel, said US President Donald Trump would Friday announce that...

Afghan government negotiators left for Doha on Friday to hold landmark peace talks with the Taliban aimed at ending the country's long running conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. Negotiations set to begin on Saturday had originally been slated to start in March but were...

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes built without planning permits that are almost impossible to obtain have risen sharply during the coronavirus pandemic despite the health risks, the UN said Friday. "The period from March to August 2020 saw the demolition or confiscation of 389...

Barcelona have taken heed of Lionel Messi's scathing criticism of the club as they begin a "fresh and exciting project", vice-president Pau Vilanova has said. Vilanova's assessment is the first time someone on the Barca board has spoken publicly since Messi's explosive interview with Goal...

The US police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd, the 46-year-old African-American man whose death sparked nationwide protests, was due to appear in court in person for the first time on Friday. Derek Chauvin, who was filmed on May 25 pressing his knee on handcuffed Floyd's...

Dozens of emerging market funds have closed this year as turmoil unleashed by the coronavirus has damaged investor sentiment towards the asset class, where returns lag those of developed economies. A weaker U.S. dollar, which would typically have boosted emerging markets, has failed to lift...

Turkey slammed a statement by European Union Mediterranean states on Friday, saying the comments were biased and “detached from reality”, but added Ankara was still open to unconditional talks with Greece. NATO members Turkey and Greece have overlapping claims to continental shelves and...

A first official visit to Israel by a United Arab Emirates delegation, provisionally planned for Sept 22, may be postponed or conducted under restrictions given a looming coronavirus lockdown, an Israeli cabinet minister said Friday. The delegates are expected to come in reciprocation of...

The United Nations independent expert on poverty is warning that the worst impacts from the coronavirus pandemic on poverty are yet to come, and that measures taken by governments to protect people so far have been insufficient. "The social safety nets put into place are full of holes,"...

Firefighters were battling unprecedented wildfires up and down the US West Coast on Friday that killed 15 people and forced more than half a million others to flee their homes, with officials warning of more deaths to come in the days ahead. The true scale of destruction was impossible to...

Thousands of supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr gathered at a mosque in east Baghdad Friday for the first weekly prayers since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Iraq's mosques have been closed to gatherings for close to six months, but notoriously outspoken Sadr said Wednesday that...