Seizing on Donald Trump’s conciliatory tone after Tehran released an American Navy veteran, Iran’s foreign minister challenged the US president Friday to return to the nuclear deal that Washington abandoned two years ago. Iran freed Michael White Thursday as part of a deal in which the...

Palestinians in the West Bank on Friday rallied to mark 53 years of Israeli occupation and protest against the Jewish state's plans to annex part of the territory. In Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, dozens of demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans against Israeli...

China said Facebook was unfairly targeting its biggest media companies on Friday after the network began attaching disclaimers to pages run by the country's state-controlled news outlets. Pages managed by news agency Xinhua and the fiery nationalist tabloid Global Times are now labelled...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelled Friday a weekend curfew introduced to halt the spread of coronavirus, pointing to concerns over the economy. Turkey has been locked down on weekends and public holidays since April, and the interior ministry said in the early hours of Friday...

US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria announced Friday a fresh campaign to hunt down remnants of Daesh (ISIS) near the Iraqi border following a recent uptick in attacks. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led paramilitary alliance that has spearheaded the ground fight against Daesh in...

French police have banned a demonstration planned to take place in front of the US Embassy in Paris on Saturday as protests mount around the world over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Paris police department said on Friday it had decided to ban the demonstrations because of...

Russia has managed to contain a massive diesel spill into a river in the Arctic, a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry told AFP on Friday. "We have stopped the spread of the petroleum products," the spokeswoman for the taskforce in charge of the accident clean-up said. "They are...

Libya's UN-recognised government announced Friday another victory in its counter-offensive against eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar, overrunning his last western stronghold Tarhuna, launchpad of an abortive 14-month assault on the capital. The recapture of the strategic town southeast...

About 1,300 civilians have died from conflict and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo in just a matter of months, while over half a million people have fled their homes, the UN said Friday. Some attacks "may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes," United Nations rights...

France on Friday denied that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido had been given refuge at its mission in Caracas, after Venezuela's foreign minister claimed he was hiding at the embassy. "Mr Juan Guaido is not at the French residency in Caracas. We have confirmed this to the Venezuelan...

The head of Britain’s spy agency GCHQ said Thursday that hackers from hostile states were trying to steal secret coronavirus vaccine research.       GCHQ Director Jeremy Fleming said the hackers were targeting the UK’s health infrastructure and research labs. ...

As the novel coronavirus continues to ravage Latin America, the death toll in Brazil topped 34,000 on Friday and passed 12,500 in Mexico. In Brazil, 1,473 more fatalities over the past 24 hours raised the death toll to 34,021, according to the Health Ministry. The total case count in...

The head of Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency has been convicted over publishing an article that quotes a former ambassador criticizing Tehran's "arbitrary" intelligence operations in Europe, a journalism watchdog group said Friday. It was unclear what sentence was handed down to ISNA...

A Syrian court has ordered that Syriatel, owned by prominent businessman Rami Makhlouf, be placed under judicial custody amid a high-profile dispute over arrears, according to a document posted on the court's Facebook page. Makhlouf, the cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and one of...

Australian police on Friday moved to ban a Black Lives Matter protest planned in Sydney, citing the risk of spreading the coronavirus. Around 10,000 people are expected to march in Sydney on Saturday to express solidarity with US protestors and demand an end to frequent Aboriginal deaths in...

In early April 2020, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released its Investigation and Identification Team’s (IIT) report on the chemical weapons use in Syria. The IIT’s mandate is very critical. While the OPCW’s Fact Finding Mission (FFM) focuses on the use of...

At least 194 asylum seekers en route to Europe were returned by the Libyan coast guard to Tripoli, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Thursday.  The asylum seekers included women and children, according to IOM, who noted that “staff were at the disembarkation...

Syrian air defenses responded to an Israeli attack near a central town on Thursday that caused explosions and a large fire in the area, state-run media said. According to the Syrian news agency SANA, the Israeli airstrike occurred near the town of Masyaf in the Hama countryside. There...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- The US-backed Kurdish forces have arrested 17 people in eastern Deir Ezzor province over Daesh links, activists said Thursday. The YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claimed the arrest campaign would secure oil fields from Daesh attacks along the Iraqi...

State-backed hackers from China have targeted staffers working on the US presidential campaign of Democrat Joe Biden, a senior Google security official said Thursday. The same official said Iranian hackers had recently targeted email accounts belonging to Republican President Donald Trump's...