NASA is rolling out the International Space Station’s red carpet for Tom Cruise to make a movie in orbit. The space agency’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said before Wednesday’s planned launch of two NASA astronauts aboard a SpaceX rocket that Elon Musk’s company is already getting...

Spain has registered 27,118 deaths from the coronavirus, the Health Ministry said Wednesday, just one more than the previous day, but countrywide mortality data suggest the actual toll could be much higher. The ministry said 39 deaths were reported over the last seven days, while a total of...

 French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said on Wednesday the situation in Libya was very worrying, warning the Syria scenario was being replicated in the country. "The crisis is deepening. We are facing a 'Syrianisation' of Libya," Le Drian told a French Senate hearing.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in a telephone call, agreed on further "close coordination" on oil output restrictions, the Kremlin said Wednesday. They also both noted the importance of joint efforts aimed at reaching the...

The Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen said its forces intercepted and downed a drone launched by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement towards the Saudi border city of Najran on Wednesday, state news agency SPA reported. The coalition said the drone was directed at civilian targets. There was...

The dollar steadied against the euro Wednesday even as the common currency remained supported by news of a proposal for an economic recovery package to help the euro zone region recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The euro was about flat against the dollar at $1.0979, after rising as...

The UN sent Wednesday 90 truckloads of humanitarian aid to Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, where millions are in urgent need of assistance. The trucks carrying supplies entered Syria through the Cilvegozu border gate in southern Hatay province of Turkey, bordering Idlib. The aid...

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem will reopen Sunday after a two-month closure due to the novel coronavirus, a senior official said Wednesday. "All the doors of the Al-Aqsa mosque (compound) will be opened at dawn on Sunday," Omar al-Kiswani, the mosque's director, told AFP....

The U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is considerably ahead of schedule, an official told AFP Wednesday, as President Donald Trump reiterated calls for the Pentagon to bring troops home. The developments came as questions loomed over the next phase of Afghanistan's long war, with...

Iran’s president urged his Cabinet Wednesday to speed up harsher laws in so-called honor killings, after a particularly disturbing slaying of a 14-year-old girl by her father shocked the nation. President Hassan Rouhani pushed for speedy adoption of relevant bills, some which have...

.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies, one day after Twitter Inc for the first time added a warning to some of his tweets prompting readers to fact check the president's claims. Trump, without offering any evidence, reiterated his...

Six militants were killed Wednesday in an explosion that hit their arms depot in northwest Syria while Russian warplanes flew overhead, a war monitoring group said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights did not say if Russia was behind the blast that killed the non-Syrian...

The European Commission is proposing a €750 billion recovery fund to reboot economies hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, EU officials said on Wednesday. Speaking ahead of the plan's formal presentation, officials said southern countries worst hit by Covid-19 would get the lion's share of...

The U.S. military accused Russia of covertly deploying at least 14 fighter jets to Libya last week to support Russian mercenaries fighting alongside a beleaguered commander in his campaign to oust the government from Tripoli, the capital. The deployment of the fighter jets appeared to...

Four police officers in Minneapolis were sacked Tuesday as a video showing one of them kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed black man who later died sparked street protests in the midwestern US city. Protesters, many wearing face masks because of the coronavirus outbreak, held signs saying...

France's economy is on course to contract 20% in the second quarter from the previous three months as the country emerges from a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, the INSEE official statistics agency estimated on Wednesday. That would mark a sharp deterioration in France's recession after...

Appeals for the Taliban to extend a ceasefire with Afghan forces went unanswered Wednesday, but there were no reports of major violence and the militants said they would release some government prisoners. A three-day pause in fighting which ended on Tuesday provided a rare respite from the...

Hong Kong police placed a dragnet around the financial hub's legislature Wednesday and fired pepper-ball rounds in the commercial district as they tried to stamp out protests against a bill banning insults to China's national anthem. The latest unrest comes days after China announced...

Iran convened its newly elected parliament Wednesday, dominated by conservative lawmakers and under strict social distancing regulations, as the country struggles to curb the spread of the coronavirus that has hit the nation hard. Iran is grappling with one of the deadliest outbreaks in the...

The U.N. patent agency has hailed the push to create a coronavirus vaccine and make it globally available, but warned against allowing copyright rows to overshadow and delay the process. "What we need in the first place here is innovation," Francis Gurry, the head of the U.N.'s World...