Pakistan has issued sweeping orders enforcing financial sanctions against Afghanistan’s Taliban, just as the militant group is in the midst of a US-led peace process in the neighboring country. Pakistan's foreign ministry in a statement late Saturday said the sanctions are not new but...

Leaders from West African states have paid a visit to Mali following a military coup in the country. A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), headed by Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, former president of Nigeria, was received at the airport by junta leaders of the...

Israel's landmark deal with the UAE to normalise ties could see businesses from the Jewish state operating on arch-rival Iran's doorstep, but are unlikely to disturb Emirati economic ties to Iran. It could also pave the way for direct economic engagement between Israeli and UAE-based...

Days ahead of a final deadline, activation of a long-planned Algeria-EU trade deal risks unravelling as political and business leaders in the North African country warn it will undermine economic sovereignty. The deal is meant to come into effect on September 1, a decade and a half after...

The new coronavirus is circulating four times more among people under 40 in France than among over 65-year-olds, France's health minister said, though he warned that contamination was on the rise among the elderly and more vulnerable too. "We're in a risky situation," Olivier Veran said in...

Credit ratings agency S&P Friday downgraded more Lebanese government debt issues after missed payments, citing the country's worsening economic crisis following the devastating explosion in Beirut earlier this month. S&P Global Ratings maintained the "selective default" or "SD"...

Italy's health ministry on Saturday reported 1,071 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, exceeding 1,000 cases in a day for the first time since May when the government eased rigid lockdown measures. 

A cargo plane hired by the UN food agency crashed in South Sudan’s capital on Saturday morning, killing seven people and injuring one more, the country’s transport minister said. Speaking to Anadolu Agency over the phone, Madut Yel Biar said five passengers and three crew were on board...

Libya’s High Council of State on Saturday lauded Turkey and Qatar’s role in ending warlord Khalifa Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli and in western parts of the country. In a statement after Friday’s cease-fire call by the Government of National Accord (GNA) and the pro-Haftar parliament,...

Turkey expects its energy imports to fall significantly following a major Black Sea natural gas find and more discoveries could be made in another area now being evaluated, Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said Saturday. President Tayyip Erdogan announced the discovery of a 320 billion...

The number of deaths from the new coronavirus has surpassed 800,000 around the world, according to an AFP tally based on official sources at around 1100 GMT Saturday. In total, 800,004 fatalities have been recorded globally, out of 23,003,079 declared infections. Latin America...

Neymar is finally getting his big chance to shine. He is getting the opportunity to prove he doesn’t need Lionel Messi to help him win football’s biggest club tournament. He is getting the chance to demonstrate that Paris Saint-Germain were right to pick him to lead their quest...

Iraq Saturday registered nearly 4,000 cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases recorded by the country to over 200,000. According to the Iraqi health ministry, 201,050 Iraqis have contracted the virus, including 6,353 who have died, while 143,393 are declared...

Amid deteriorating economic and health conditions, the Syrian people are not being infected or killed by Covid-19 only, but also by diseases that began to spread rapidly in large numbers, including kidney failure, which is surprisingly spread among young people. One of the doctors, who...

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has welcomed a ceasefire announcement in Libya, the UAE news agency WAM reported Saturday. GCC Secretary General Nayef Falah Mubarak al-Hajraf called on all parties "to adhere to [this] constructive step, to urgently engage in political...

The local council in the Turkish-held Ras Al Ain region has suspended its work in protest over the refusal of the appointment of one of its members as director of the border crossing. The council’s statement declared that, “We, the members of the local council of Ras Al Ain, announce...

The German Constitutional Court decreed that Arabic-speaking journalists should be entitled to an interpreter during the first criminal trial worldwide on torture in Syria. The Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) confirmed in a statement today that Arabic interpretation...

 Oil prices lost about 1% on Friday as the economic recovery worldwide runs into stumbling blocks due to renewed coronavirus lockdowns and on worries about rising crude supply. The euro zone’s economic recovery from its deepest downturn on record stalled this month as pent-up demand...

Protesters in the southern Iraqi city of Basra set fire to parliament's local office Friday as security forces fired live rounds in the air to disperse them, a Reuters witness and security sources said. The protesters had gathered to demand that Iraq's parliament sack the provincial...

The planet should be able to rein in the novel coronavirus pandemic faster than the two years it took to tame the 1918 flu pandemic, the World Health Organization chief said Friday. "We have a disadvantage of globalisation, closeness, connectedness, but an advantage of better technology, so...