The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) expects that Russia, Turkey and Iran will reach a consensus to remove the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar Al-Assad, and establish a ceasefire in exchange for forming a transitional government that includes the opposition, members of the regime...

A former senior North Korean diplomat apologised on Monday after saying leader Kim Jong Un was likely so ill he could not stand, days before he emerged in state media chain smoking and walking briskly at an event attended by hundreds of officials. Kim disappeared from state media for weeks,...

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is set to extend the country’s state of emergency on Monday until the end of May following a meeting of the government’s coronavirus task force later in the day. While much of the world is relaxing lockdown measures, Japan is extending its state of...

Hundreds of people are rolling up their sleeves in countries across the world to be injected with experimental vaccines that might stop COVID-19, spurring hope - maybe unrealistic - that an end to the pandemic may arrive sooner than anticipated. About 100 research groups are pursuing...

Jordan's cash-strapped economy is expected to contract around 3 percent in 2020 due to the impact of the coronavirus as government revenue plunges due to a tight lockdown that paralyzed businesses, the finance minister said Sunday. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which last March...

The Trump administration is "turbocharging" an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to officials familiar with U.S. planning. President Donald Trump, who has stepped...

Iran's parliament has passed a bill allowing the government to slash four zeros from the rial, Iranian state media reported Monday, after a sharp fall in the value of the currency as a result of crippling U.S. sanctions. Iran's national currency will be changed from the rial to the Toman,...

Millions of Europeans emerged from lockdown on Monday, with hardest-hit Italy leading the way out of its two-month coronavirus confinement. Blue skies greeted Romans as they stepped into a world forever changed by the pandemic that has now infected 3.5 million people. The milestone came...

   (Zaman Al Wasl)- A three-year-old child was severely wounded when his tent caught fire in a makeshifts camp in northern Idlib province, activists said Sunday. The child boy has been admitted to a border Turkish hospital after pleas by opposition activists. Medics...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory, but did not dispute U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that it was not man-made. “There is a significant amount of evidence that this...

France’s state-supported “StopCOVID” contact-tracing app should enter its testing phase in the week of May 11 when the country starts to unwind its lockdown, a government minister said on Sunday. Minister for Digital Affairs Cedric O, a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s inner circle,...

Egyptian armed forces have killed 126 militants in a security operation in the restive Sinai Peninsula, according to a military spokesman on Sunday. In a statement, Colonel Tamer al-Refai said the army carried out 22 raids and 16 operations. A total of eight tunnels in Gaza border were...

Turkey’s health minister has announced 61 new deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, which is the lowest number in over a month. The country's total death toll stands at 3,397. Fahrettin Koca tweeted Sunday that 1,670 more cases were confirmed, with the total number of infections now at...

The British government on Sunday said the easing of coronavirus lockdown measures was likely to be gradual, as it announced a further rise in the overall death toll. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to unveil the government's plans in coming days, after announcing the country had...

Sudanese police broke up a protest staged by supporters of former President Omar al-Bashir in the capital Khartoum on Sunday, according to a local police source. Several protesters were arrested by security forces for violating a lockdown imposed by the authorities to stem the spread of...

Thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank entered Israel to work Sunday after weeks of absence over fears of the coronavirus, as the pandemic's spread slowed. An Israeli security official said that as of the morning, some 11,500 Palestinians with permits had entered Israel and settler...

Idir, an Algerian singer who gave voice to the Berber and Kabyle cultures, has died in Paris. He was 70. Saturday’s death of the vocalist, born Hamid Cheriet, was confirmed on a post on his official Facebook page that read “we regret to announce the passing of our father (to all), Idir....

A top Iranian official Sunday warned that a nuclear deal the U.S. withdrew unilaterally from would "die forever" if an arms embargo on Tehran is extended. The United States is campaigning to extend the ban on selling conventional weapons to Iran, which is set to be progressively lifted as...

Militants from the Daesh group rioted in a northeast Syrian prison Sunday, a month after similar violence at the facility allowed four extremists to escape, an opposition war monitor and a Kurdish activist collective said. Kurdish forces sent reinforcements to the prison in the eastern...

Jordan said Sunday it had lifted all restrictions on economic activity in the latest easing of coronavirus lockdown rules to help jump-start the cash-strapped economy. Jordan has in the last two weeks been lifting restrictions to allow businesses back to work, but with lower levels of staff...