HANOVER, Germany U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would do whatever he could to advance a controversial trade deal with the European Union in his last eight months in office, but warned that time was running short. Obama has pushed to complete two... More »
HANOVER, Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday that she did not favor classical “safe zones” in Syria which would need to be protected by foreign forces but believed that peace talks in Geneva could agree areas where fleeing Syrians could feel... More »
MILAN Three late 15th century paintings missing since they were looted by Nazi troops from a Tuscan villa over 70 years ago have been recovered and two people have been accused of receiving stolen goods, police announced on Monday. The works, of religious them... More »
KUWAIT Peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending over a year of civil war and a Saudi-led intervention in Yemen will not begin on Monday as planned, officials from the warring sides said, amid objections over continued fighting despite an announced ceasefire. Dele... More »
BEIRUT Syrian rebel groups announced a new battle against government forces on Monday, a sign of escalating violence that has undermined a ceasefire deal and threatens to derail U.N.-led peace talks. The groups, which included factions fighting under the banne... More »
BAGHDAD U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter flew into Iraq on Monday to discuss offering more help in the fight against Islamic State, possibly including sending in more U.S. troops, officials said. Carter would meet Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defe... More »
ADEN A shaky truce took hold in Yemen on Monday under a U.N.-backed effort to end a war that has made the country a front in Saudi Arabia’s region wide rivalry with Iran and caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The war-damaged capital Sanaa spe... More »
HIROSHIMA, Japan John Kerry on Monday became the first U.S. secretary of state to pay his respects at Hiroshima’s memorial to victims of the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack, raising speculation that U.S. President Barack Obama might make his own visit in May. Followi... More »
DIKILI, Turkey/LESBOS, Greece Migrants sent back from the Greek island of Lesbos began arriving in Turkey on Monday under a disputed European Union scheme aimed at closing the main route by which a million people poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the l... More »
BAKU Three Azeri servicemen were killed in fresh fighting with Armenian-backed separatists over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region on Monday, Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry said. Azerbaijan had halted its attacks but Armenia was still “aggravating the situat... More »
BEIRUT The Saudi-owned television news channel Al Arabiya shut its offices in Lebanon and dismissed 27 employees, two of its journalists said on Friday, in a sudden move that comes amid political tensions between Riyadh and Beirut. Protesters also attacked the... More »
DUBAI A Saudi-led military coalition on Monday said it had completed a prisoner swap in Yemen, exchanging nine Saudi prisoners for 109 Yemeni nationals ahead of a planned truce and peace talks aimed at ending the year-long war with Houthi rebels. The statement... More »
DUBAI The secretary of the Iranian National Security Council has congratulated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on regaining the city of Palmyra, Tasnim news agency reported on Monday. “The determination of the Syrian nation, government and army to eliminate t... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his criticism of NATO, a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades, and called for the alliance’s overhaul days before world leaders convene in Washington. Preside... More »
BEIRUT Syrian government forces backed by heavy Russian air support drove Islamic State out of Palmyra on Sunday, inflicting what the army called a mortal blow to militants who seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples. The loss of Palmyra re... More »
BRUSSELS Belgian police briefly used water cannon to control several hundred rowdy protesters in central Brussels on Sunday after they ignored an official call for marches to be postponed following Tuesday’s bombings. Amid fears of further attacks, officials w... More »
ISLAMABAD Pakistan and Iran aim to increase annual trade volumes between the two countries to $5 billion by 2021, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Saturday. Sharif spoke at a business conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who arrived i... More »
BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq Iraq’s armed forces started an offensive against Islamic State in the northerly Nineveh province on Thursday in what a military statement described as the first stage of an operation aimed at liberating the city of Mosul. The assault was la... More »
ITU ABA, South China Sea On Itu Aba, in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea, Taiwanese coast guard officials proudly haul a small wooden bucket of water from one of several simple concrete wells on the coral outcrop. The water, clear and sweet tasti... More »
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday the attack in Brussels that killed more than 30 people is the “latest brutal reminder” that more must be done to defeat Islamic State militants, including by European Union member countries... More »
ANKARA The death toll in a car bomb attack in the Turkish capital Ankara has risen to 37 people, Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said on Monday, adding that 71 people were still being treated in hospital. Of those in hospital, 15 were in serious condition, ... More »
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 »
TUNIS/ALGIERS The signal to attack came from the mosque, sending dozens of Islamist fighters storming through the Tunisian town of Ben Guerdan to hit army and police posts in street battles that lit the dawn sky with tracer bullets. Militants used a megaphone ... More »
BRUSSELS Europe’s emerging migration policy is looking increasingly like Donald Trump without the hair. Except that, unlike the Republican presidential frontrunner, who wants to make Mexico pay for a wall to keep migrants out of the United States, the European... More »
SEOUL North Korea on Sunday denied that it conducted cyber attacks against officials from rival South Korea, calling the South’s accusation that it did so a “fabrication”. South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Friday that North Korea had recently stepped ... 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
BEIRUT The Syrian army advanced toward the Turkish border on Monday in a major offensive backed by Russia and Iran that rebels say now threatens the future of their nearly five-year-old insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad. Iranian backed-militias pl... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Republican White House front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday he would be open to harsh measures to deal with the threat from Islamic State, including going beyond the controversial interrogation tactic known as waterboarding. In an interview... More »
WASHINGTON Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) has shut down more than 125,000 terrorism-related accounts since the middle of 2015, most of them linked to the Islamic State group, the company said in a blog post on Friday. Twitter has said it only takes down accounts when th... 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 »
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 »
ISLAMABAD A Pakistani man has been arrested for hoisting the flag of arch rival India on his roof, an act police described as “anti-state” but which the accused says was a tribute to Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, officials said on Wednesday. Umar Draz, f... 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 »
PARIS Syrian Kurdish officials will not be invited to peace talks in Geneva, where negotiations for the opposition will be led by a Saudi-backed opposition group, France’s foreign minister said on Wednesday. Laurent Fabius said United Nations special envoy Sta... 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 »
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 »
DAVOS, Switzerland Politicians and business leaders gathering in the Swiss Alps this week face an increasingly divided world, with the poor falling further behind the super-rich and political fissures in the United States, Europe and the Middle East running de... 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 »
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 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 »
WASHINGTON U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Sunday that Democrat Hillary Clinton was a “liar” for claiming that his proposal to ban entry of all foreign Muslims into the United States has aided Islamic State’s propaganda efforts. Spe... More »
MANCHESTER, N.H. U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton backed elements of President Barack Obama’s strategy to fight Islamic State militants in a debate on Saturday, drawing criticism from all sides for saying “we now finally are where we n... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump said separately on Sunday that the United States should not try to topple dictators such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, highlighting a skepticism over foreign wars that transcends party lines... 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 »
DUBAI U.N.-sponsored Yemeni peace talks in Switzerland appeared to be struggling amid differences over government demands for the release of senior officials held by the Iran-allied Houthis, sources close to the talks said on Thursday. The dispute comes amid f... More »
NEW DELHI Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold talks with Pakistan on Wednesday, the first visit by India’s top diplomat to its rival in three years, part of efforts to restart a peace dialogue plagued by militant attacks and distrust.Swaraj will le... 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 »
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 »
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK President Barack Obama on Sunday called on Silicon Valley to help address the threat of militant groups using social media and electronic communications to plan and promote violence, setting up renewed debate over personal privacy online. “... More »
WASHINGTON Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Sunday she would take the relationship between the U.S. and Israel “to the next level,” but warned that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not be enough to stabilize the entire regio... 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 »
TOKYO An award-winning Japanese manga artist, whose retellings of traditional ghost stories and depictions of the horrors of World War Two helped propel anime to global popularity, died on Monday at the age of 93. Shigeru Mizuki, a beloved household name in Ja... 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 Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who last week compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs,” met with refugees in Jordan on Saturday and urged the U.S. government to do more to help but did not endorse bringing them to the United States. Ca... More »
ABU DHABI U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was set to hold talks with senior Emirati and Saudi officials in Abu Dhabi on Monday to find ways to bring Syrian opposition groups together at a conference that will be hosted by Saudi Arabia next month. The hastil... 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 »
BEIRUT Heavy air strikes believed to have been carried out by French jets hit two Islamic State training camps and a suspected arms depot in and around the jihadist-held city of Raqqa in Syria overnight, a group monitoring the war said on Monday. There were mo... More »
KABUL Last year, Hamid Rostami, a 28-year-old from Wardak in western Afghanistan, was expelled from Denmark after years trying to stay in Europe. Jobless and cut off from his family, he now sits in wintry Kabul wondering how to go back. Jobless and unwilling t... More »
WASHINGTON The deadly attacks in Paris pushed terrorism and the Syrian refugee crisis to the center of the U.S presidential campaign on Sunday, as Republicans hammered Obama administration plans to take in more refugees as well as Democratic front-runner Hilla... More »
MOSCOWRussia and Iran have signed a contract for Moscow to supply Tehran with S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, Sergei Chemezov, the chief executive of Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying on Monday. ... More »
SEOUL The U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs urged North Korea on Monday to immediately cease all activities related to its nuclear program and said they will have no tolerance for any military provocation by Pyongyang. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and ... More »
WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidates accused President Barack Obama on Sunday of showing weakness in U.S. policy in Syria, doubting that his small deployment of special operations troops will make much difference without a coherent broader strategy. “... More »
ISTANBUL Disparate ideas like a sea-borne zoo, an Aboriginal peace treaty and the lost birdsong of a ruined Armenian capital form a cohesive body of work at this year’s Istanbul Biennial, a top international art show taking place in turbulent times. “Saltwater... More »
LONDON The Western-backed Free Syrian Army said on Monday it had not refused an offer of military support from Russia and that Moscow needs to stop targeting its bases in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview broadcast on Saturday ... More »
WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush transitioned from defense to offense on Sunday after criticism from rival Donald Trump that his brother, former President George W. Bush, carried some blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Trump, the flamb... More »
LOS ANGELES With actors not turning up on set, crew sicknesses, equipment going missing and unpredictable weather, the filming of war drama “Beasts of No Nation” is fast becoming a captivating tale in itself. “There were distinct, daily moments where I sat the... More »
KARACHI The lean days appear to be over for Mor Sahib, an 87-year-old crocodile venerated by Pakistan’s tiny Sheedi community, as pilgrims once again flock to a shrine in Karachi that has been shunned for years amid fears of Taliban attacks. The aging reptile,... More »
LONDON Some of Britain’s most senior former judicial figures criticized Prime Minister David Cameron’s government on Monday for its response to the EU migrant crisis, saying it was inadequate and was pushing people into the arms of smugglers. A statement, sign... More »
MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet the United Nations’ special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, on Tuesday, RIA news agency quoted the ministry’s press department as saying. RIA said the information came in response to a question on wh... More »
BEIRUT A stone’s throw from dramatic street protests shaking central Beirut, art lovers gathered to celebrate the reopening of a museum of modern art which they hailed as a symbol of the Lebanese capital’s resilience through conflict and turmoil. The Sursock M... More »
MINSK The Belarussian recipient of the Nobel prize for literature charged Russia on Thursday with carrying out an “invasion” of Ukraine by backing separatists in its eastern regions. Author Svetlana Alexievich, who was awarded the prize for her portrayal of li... More »
KABUL Police and residents said Afghan government forces had regained control of most of the besieged city of Kunduz on Monday, and some shops in the center of the provincial capital opened for the first time since it fell to Taliban fighters a week ago.Reside... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it’s “not even a contest”. Trump mentioned the countries i... More »
UNITED NATIONS Russia appeared to seize the initiative in international efforts to end the conflict in Syria on Sunday as Washington scrambled to devise a new strategy for the war-ravaged country and France sent warplanes to bomb Islamic State targets. As lead... 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 »
TOKYO Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fell after the passage of controversial national security bills, which could let troops fight overseas for the first time since the end of World War Two, polls published on Monday showed. Support for ... More »
BERLIN The United States will increase the number of refugees it takes in by 15,000 over each of the next two years, bringing the total to 100,000 by 2017, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks with his German counterpart on Sunday. The remarks m... More »
Apple Inc is stepping up aid to the thousands of migrants that are streaming into Europe from war-torn countries, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told employees in an internal message on Friday. Cook wrote in a message on the company’s intranet site that the ... More »
MOSCOW/WARSAW Russia summoned Poland’s ambassador on Thursday to protest at the removal of a Soviet-era statue in a Polish town on the 76th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, highlighting increased tensions between the neighbors. Katarzyna Pelczynsk... More »
SARAJEVO Bosnia’s National Museum, a custodian of culture for a region torn by ethnic divisions, re-opened on Tuesday after a three-year closure, displaying treasures including a medieval Jewish book of Passover rites. After Bosnia’s divided authorities finall... 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 »
VIENNA/MUNICH Austria said on Sunday it planned to end emergency measures that have allowed thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary into Austria and Germany since Saturday and move step by step “towards normality”. Austria had suspended its random border che... More »
BEIRUT The overpowering stench of the rubbish piling up in Lebanon’s streets has become a potent symbol of the political rot protesters blame not only for the garbage crisis but a gridlocked sectarian power system unable to meet citizens’ most basic needs, fro... More »
BEIRUT/MOSCOW While the desperate flight of Syrians from their country’s war was dominating news bulletins this summer, yet another diplomatic push to end the four-year-old conflict was quietly running into the sand. That largely unnoticed failure has reinforc... More »
