MOSCOW Russia is ready to coordinate its actions with the U.S.-led coalition in Syria to push the Islamic State group out of Raqqa, Interfax news agency quoted Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. “We are ready to coordinate our actions with the ... More »
BEIJING China’s military must pour efforts into developing cutting edge defense technology, which has strategic significance, China’s President Xi Jinping said on Sunday, according to state media reports. Xi also stressed professionalizing the country’s milita... More »
KANSAS CITY, Mo./BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Donald Trump has called them thugs, professional organizers and supporters of Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. But the protesters who have stepped up their actions against the Republican presidential front-ru... More »
WASHINGTON/BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump refused to take responsibility on Sunday for clashes at his campaign events and criticized protesters who have dogged his rallies and forced him to cancel one in Chicago last week. ... More »
DAYTON, Ohio Secret Service officers rushed on stage to protect U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump during a disturbance at a rally on Saturday, a day after rowdy protests shut down his event in Chicago. Trump briefly ducked at the podium an... More »
Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes has apologized for suggesting security guards at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris may have had advance knowledge of the Islamic State attack at the venue that left 89 people dead. The California-based Eagles of Dea... More »
AUSTIN, Texas Online harassment and sexism is demeaning women and can no longer be brushed aside as an ugly side of social media and the gaming industry if they are to thrive, panelists on Saturday said at the South By Southwest (SXSW) tech meeting in Austin. ... More »
MANILA The Philippines is to lease from Japan five aircraft to help patrol the disputed South China Sea, President Benigno Aquino announced on Wednesday, as China expands its military presence in the region. The Philippine military, for decades preoccupied wit... More »
SEOUL North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the country has miniaturized nuclear warheads to mount on ballistic missiles and ordered improvements in the power and precision of its arsenal, state media reported on Wednesday. Kim has called for his military to be... More »
SEOUL North Korea is using Chinese-made trucks in a new mobile artillery system showcased five days ago, according to photographs reviewed by Reuters, underlining the difficulty in enforcing U.N. sanctions against the isolated state. North Korea’s Multiple Roc... More »
TEL AVIV An American tourist was stabbed to death and at least nine other people were wounded by a Palestinian armed with a knife on a popular boardwalk in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, authorities said, while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in a meeting a few kilome... More »
MOGADISHU Islamist militants in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, set off a vehicle packed with explosives next to a cafe near a police building on Wednesday, killing at least three police officers. The Islamist al Shabaab group, which wants to topple the Western... More »
BEIJING China is taking a “distinctly Chinese approach” to national security with a raft of new laws, including one on counterterrorism, the third-ranked leader said on Wednesday, offering a strong rebuttal to Western criticism. The U.S., Canadian, German and ... More »
Amid Yemen’s misery, two young women living in the war-damaged cities of Aden and Sanaa know they are among the relatively fortunate. They are not starving, their homes have not been destroyed and they have survived bombs and bullets unscathed. But both long t... More »
GENEVA/BRUSSELS The United Nations and human rights groups warned on Tuesday that a tentative European Union deal to send back all irregular migrants to Turkey in exchange for political and financial rewards could be illegal. “I am deeply concerned about any a... More »
A man suspected of shooting an Idaho pastor who led a prayer at a rally for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was arrested on Tuesday and was facing attempted murder charges, police said. Kyle Odom, 30, was taken into custody in Washington D.C. i... More »
WASHINGTON/TEL AVIV Israel would have shown good manners had it informed the United States directly rather than through the news media that it was turning down a proposed summit meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, the White House said on Tuesday. But spo... More »
BANGKOK On a wall in a northern suburb of Bangkok “Asin Acid” puts the finishing touches to a spray-painted picture of a colorful giant chicken holding a broken loudspeaker. “The loudspeaker represents the media. The media is trying to say something but is bei... More »
TEL AVIV Israel’s culture minister had a blunt message on Sunday for liberals worried about what they consider efforts by the government to stifle dissent in the arts: “Cut the bullshit.” Free-speech debate in Israel has grown fierce under conservative Prime M... More »
ISTANBUL A day after Turkey’s top-selling newspaper Zaman was taken over by the state, it dropped its criticisms of the government on Sunday and published flattering stories on President Tayyip Erdogan. The episode is the latest twist in a long-running conflic... More »
MANILA The Philippines on Monday urged China to respect a forthcoming ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague on a territorial dispute in the South China Sea after Beijing accused Manila of “political provocation”. China claims almost the entire South Chin... More »
MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on the phone on Sunday about closer cooperation between their countries’ militaries on the Syria ceasefire plan, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday. The conversati... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Officials at the University of California Berkeley said on Friday that they were alerting 80,000 people, including current and former students, faculty and vendors of a cyber attack on a system that stores social security and bank account numbers... More »
BERLIN Facebook has learned from Germany to include migrants as a class of people that needed to be protected from “hate speech” online, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on the second day of a visit to Berlin on Friday. A perceived slowness to remove anti-... More »
NEW YORK First responders and the families of victims of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center gathered in New York on Friday to remember “the country’s first glimpse of terrorism,” a prelude to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers. ... More »
BANGKOK Sitting in her busy Bangkok noodle shop, Bunruen Klinnak professes “love” for Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a 2006 military coup and later fled abroad. But Klinnak, 55, also fears Thaksin’s return to politics c... More »
HONG KONG/SINGAPORE With the threat of a UK exit from the European Union no longer just a distant prospect, already battered investors are shoring up defensive positions against a host of intensifying geopolitical risks, including a “Brexit”. Investors typical... More »
WASHINGTON China is “changing the operational landscape” in the South China Sea by deploying missiles and radar as part of an effort to militarily dominate East Asia, a senior U.S. military official said on Tuesday. China is “clearly militarizing the South Chi... More »
BENGHAZI, Libya Military forces loyal to Libya’s eastern government said on Tuesday they had taken control of two key neighbourhoods in Benghazi, building on gains made against Islamist fighters over the previous three days. The military said it had full contr... More »
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama launched a final push on Tuesday to persuade Congress to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite strong opposition from lawmakers who do not want detainees transferred to the United States. The presiden... More »
WASHINGTON Republican lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday to counter President Barack Obama’s bid to close the Guantanamo detention center, underscoring the difficulty he faces keeping a promise to close it before leaving office next year. Republican R... More »
ANKARA Iranian state-run media outlets have added $600,000 to a bounty for the killing of British author Salman Rushdie imposed in 1989 over the publishing of his book “The Satanic Verses”. The leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhol... More »
WASHINGTON North Korea’s latest rocket launch might kick off a buildup of U.S. missile defense systems in Asia, U.S. officials and missile defense experts said, something that could further strain U.S.-China ties and also hurt relations between Beijing and Seo... More »
SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying what it called a satellite, drawing renewed international condemnation just weeks after it carried out a nuclear bomb test. Critics of the rocket program say it is being used to test techno... More »
MANCHESTER, N.H. U.S. Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is polling in the low single digits nationally but may be poised to play the role of spoiler in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary by cutting into the support of higher-profile rivals such as Mar... More »
MANCHESTER, N.H. Republican White House contender Marco Rubio struggled at a debate on Saturday at the worst possible time, potentially confounding his bid to emerge as Donald Trump’s chief rival in New Hampshire and giving hope to three rivals desperate for a... More »
JERUSALEM Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who tried to stab them in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the military said, the latest in a months-long wave of Palestinian attacks that shows little sign of abating. The Palestinian had infiltrated a secur... More »
BEIRUT The death toll from a suicide attack in Damascus on Sunday that was claimed by the Islamic State militant group has risen to more than 70, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. A car bomb and two suicide bombers attacked the Sayeda Zeinab distri... More »
NAYPYITAW Hundreds of lawmakers from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy were sworn into Myanmar’s parliament on Monday, with enough seats to choose the country’s first democratically elected government since the military took power in 1962. The NL... More »
GENEVA Syria’s main opposition group is considering a proposal by U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura that could pave the way to the delegation pressing ahead with talks after holding their first meeting with him on Sunday, a Western diplomatic source said. ... More »
BEIJING The different ethnic groups who live in China’s violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang should make friends with each other to improve trust between them, the Chinese government’s top official there was quoted as saying on Monday. Hundreds of peo... More »
JERUSALEM Israel made public on Wednesday a handwritten request for clemency by Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, who was executed by Israel in 1962 following a war crimes trial. In his letter to then-President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Eichmann said ... More »
LAUSANNE, Switzerland The co-leader of the Syrian Democratic Council, Haytham Manna, on Wednesday he would not take part in peace talks in Geneva unless two Kurdish leaders, Saleh Muslim and Ilham Ahmed, were also invited to participate. “I’ll go with my frien... More »
TAIPEI Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou’s planned trip to the Taiwanese-held island of Itu Aba in the disputed South China Sea is “extremely unhelpful” and won’t do anything to resolve disputes over the waterway, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. Ma’s office ear... More »
LONDON Ukraine must show resolve in tackling “brutal” corruption by prosecuting high-level officials or face widespread disappointment at home and among foreign institutions, the head of its internationally-funded anti-graft ombudsman said. Former Lithuanian f... More »
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump won the endorsement on Tuesday of Joe Arpaio, the provocative Arizona sheriff known for his tough stance on illegal immigration. Arpaio joined the real estate billionaire in Marshalltown, Iowa, to voice his sup... More »
BERLIN Support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc fell 2.5 percentage points to 32.5 percent, its lowest level since the 2013 election, an INSA poll in Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper showed on Tuesday. The poll also put the right-win... More »
YANGON Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing nominated military officers, who hold a quarter of seats in parliament, to their posts, state media said on Tuesday, another step by the army in what has so far surprised many as a remarkably peaceful transition. Aung ... More »
LONDON British lawmakers on Monday debated a petition to ban U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from Britain over remarks on Muslims, but while describing his comments as “crazy” and “offensive”, most said the ban would go against free speech.... More »
WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio praised Iran’s release of five detained Americans on Sunday, but sharply criticized the deal the White House made to win their freedom saying it would lead to more Americans being taken “ho... More »
ROME Italy evacuated 15 Libyans on Monday for medical treatment after they were wounded in last week’s truck bomb attack against a police training center, the Italian government said. At dawn, Italy sent a C-130 transport plane to the port city of Misrata to t... More »
ANKARA Turkey is unsettled by “anti-Islamic” messages in the U.S. presidential race, in which the Republican front runner called for a ban on foreign Muslims, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday. Donald Trump last month advocated banning all forei... More »
BEIRUT Aid convoys headed for a besieged Syrian town where thousands are trapped and the United Nations says people are reported to have died of starvation. Trucks headed for Madaya, near the Lebanese border, and two villages in the northwest of the country on... More »
DUBAI Iran took steps on Monday to try to limit the diplomatic damage from an attack on Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran by an angry mob, laying blame on a top security official and saying some of those who carried out the attack were being interrogated. Irani... More »
DUESSELDORF, Germany People of foreign descent were responsible for virtually all of the violence on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, a German state interior minister said on Monday, adding that this included migrants that arrived in Germany over the past year. “Bas... More »
TEL AVIV Building on its expertise in technology, Israel is emerging as a leader in the race to keep cars secure and prevent the nightmare scenario of a hacker commandeering your vehicle. Most cars today are equipped with some level of connectivity and self-dr... More »
WASHINGTON As Barack Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the U.S. president and his aides have insisted he will not be content simply to run out the clock on foreign policy and is acting decisively to tackle crises ... More »
DUBAI President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister on Thursday to expand Iran’s missile program, in defiance of a U.S. threat to impose sanctions over a ballistic missile test Iran carried out in October. Under a landmark agreement it clinched with wo... More »
DUBAI President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister on Thursday to expand Iran’s missile program, in response to a U.S. threat to impose sanctions over a ballistic missile test Iran carried out in October. “As the U.S. government is clearly still pursu... More »
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan Afghan police were holding out against Taliban forces who have surrounded their compound in Sangin, in the southern province of Helmand, on Monday as the militants closed in on another district capital. “Right now there is a heavy figh... More »
BANGKOK Thai police on Monday said they will charge 11 activists who tried to stage a protest over suspected corruption in an army-built park with illegal assembly as allegations of irregularities in the park’s funding persist. Dozens of students activists wer... More »
BENGHAZI, Libya Libya’s Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who leads forces allied to the country’s recognized government, called for an end to an arms embargo to help fight Islamist militants after holding talks with the U.N. envoy on a peace agreement. Haftar, a former al... More »
SYDNEY Australia will not bow to Chinese pressure to halt surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea at the center of rival claims between China and some of its neighbors, Defense Minister Marise Payne said on Thursday. The Australian De... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Wednesday that his department has been consulting social media in reviews of immigration applications since early this year, hitting back at criticism that U.S. authorities are not doing enough to... More »
OAXACA, Mexico Bloodshot faces, baked into ceramic pots, grimace in pain. Gnarled fingers poke from ashen clay. A skull and hands, the only remains of a body, grip the top of a wall, trying to escape. They are among more than 100 pieces created by Francisco To... More »
MOSCOW Russia will consider Afghanistan’s request for arms supply in a careful manner, but that task belongs first of all to the United States, RIA news agency cited Kremlin’s special envoy to Afghanistan as saying on Monday. Zamir Kabulov told the agency that... More »
LONDON British detectives have charged a man with attempted murder after a knife attack at an east London metro station on Saturday night which was described by police as a terrorist incident. Police said 29-year-old Muhaydin Mire of east London would appear a... More »
ZURICH NATO has ruled out sending ground troops to fight against Islamic State militants in Syria, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg told a Swiss newspaper, stressing the need to bolster local forces in the conflict. “That is not on the agenda of the coa... More »
PARIS U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping pledged on Monday to work together to drive forward a climate change agreement at international talks in Paris. Ahead of a bilateral meeting with Xi, Obama said the leadership of the two coun... More »
BANGUI Pope Francis ventured into one of the world’s most dangerous neighbourhoods on Monday to beg Christians and Muslims to end a spiral of hate, vendetta and bloodshed that has killed thousands over the past three years. Under intense security, Francis pass... More »
WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said on Sunday that he found facilities at a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan to be “really quite nice” and that people there would rather stay or return home to Syria than come to the United States. But Car... More »
BAGHDAD Two senior U.S. senators called on Sunday for Washington to nearly triple military force levels in Iraq to 10,000 and send an equal number of troops to Syria as part of a multinational ground force to counter Islamic State in both countries. Republican... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump insisted on Sunday he was “100 percent right” when he said he saw thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, even though fact-checkers hav... More »
ROME Rome has banned centurion impersonators who charge to scowl in photos around the ancient Colosseum amphitheatre and frequently come under fire for their pushy tactics with tourists. The Italian capital is imposing extra security measures and sprucing up p... More »
WASHINGTON Leading Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said on Sunday the United States is not doing enough to fight Islamic State, and the group is gaining strength outside Iraq and Syria. Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, ... More »
WASHINGTON The Obama administration should reconsider plans to bring thousands of Syrian refugees into the Unites States after at least 127 people died in Paris in gun and bomb attacks claimed by Islamic State, two Republican candidates said on Saturday. “Pres... More »
LONDONBritain’s security agencies will receive a significant boost to staff numbers as part of a multi-pronged effort to stave off threats from terrorist plotters, finance minister George Osborne said on Monday. “I can confirm that over the next five years we ... More »
CAIRO Iraq’s parliament voted on Monday to bar the government from passing key reforms without its approval in an effort to restrict Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, parliamentarians said. The chamber took the step after Abadi unilaterally passed reforms in Aug... More »
AMMAN/BEIRUT Rebels who have inflicted big losses on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad say Russia’s intervention in support of its ally will only lead to an escalation of the war and may encourage the rebels’ Gulf Arab backers to pour in more military aid. Russ... More »
BELFAST When IRA-linked gunmen turned their fire on one other this summer they triggered a political crisis in Northern Ireland’s fragile government of pro-British unionists and republicans working for a united Ireland. They also revealed an uncomfortable trut... More »
ISTANBUL Turkey’s military said on Monday its warplanes bombarded Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets overnight after the militants staged a deadly attack in which, one security source told Reuters, 16 Turkish soldiers were killed. The PKK said it had killed... More »
NAYPYITAW Myanmar’s powerful commander-in-chief has reiterated that the military will respect the outcome of the country’s Nov. 8 election, seen as a crucial test of Myanmar’s reform process. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said that the main concern of the arm... More »
SEOUL North and South Korea agreed early on Tuesday to end a military standoff that sparked an exchange of artillery fire and had ratcheted up tension on one of the world’s most heavily-fortified borders. Under an accord reached in the early hours, following m... More »
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama, fresh from vacation and nine rounds of golf in Martha’s Vineyard, launched into a busy two weeks promoting renewable energy and his nuclear deal with Iran. With the U.S. presidential election campaign and China’s slumping sto... More »
NEW YORK Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is giving the U.S. Justice Department her private email server and a thumb drive of work-related emails from her tenure as secretary of state, a spokesman for her campaign said on Tuesday. Clinton’s us... More »
WASHINGTON Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has instructed her attorney to give the U.S. Justice Department her private email server and a thumb drive of work-related emails from her tenure as secretary of state, CNN reported on Tuesday, quoti... More »
WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Tuesday will launch an attack on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s handling of Iraq when she was secretary of state, saying she must bear some of the blame for the rise of Islamic State militants. Bush is to de... More »
