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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
DAKAR A one-month-old baby girl who was Guinea’s last reported Ebola case left hospital on Saturday, delighting medical staff and putting the country on course to be declared free of the deadly virus. Guinea will become officially Ebola-free after 42 days if n... 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 »
SYDNEY Australia’s hardline immigration policies overshadowed the launch of its bid to join the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday, with the government and rights lawyers arguing bitterly over a pregnant Somali asylum-seeker who claims she was raped. Immigrat... More »
PARIS U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday lobbied for the United States to be reelected to UNESCO’s board, promising to work with Congress to restore funding after Washington cut off its contributions in 2011 in protest over the Palestinians being adm... 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 »
UNITED NATIONS China’s President Xi Jinping told the United Nations on Sunday that all Chinese women have the opportunity to excel, touting his government’s record on women’s rights as the United States slammed Beijing and others for jailing women for their vi... More »
ANKARA Turkey remains opposed to any political transition in Syria involving President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying on Monday in an apparent clarification of its policy. Turkey has been Assad’s most outspoken cri... More »
NEW YORK President Barack Obama will meet with Cuba’s President Raul Castro on Tuesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, a White House official said on Sunday. The official was speaking aboard Obama’s plane as he flew from Wa... More »
UNITED NATIONS Liberia needs two years to regain its economic footing after it was battered by the Ebola epidemic, as it moves to boost access to electricity and infrastructure and diversify the economy, Liberia’s president said in an interview on Saturday. Li... More »
UNITED NATIONS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a host of celebrities kicked off a campaign on Saturday to make Internet access universal, saying this was critical to fulfilling the United Nations’ newly adopted agenda to com... More »
FREETOWN Sierra Leone released its last confirmed Ebola patient from hospital on Monday and began a 42-day countdown to being declared free of the virus, medical sources said. The world’s worst known Ebola epidemic has raged in West Africa for more than 18 mon... More »
ADEN, Yemen Yemeni fighters backed by Saudi-led air strikes battled to take back northern suburbs of Aden from Houthi opponents on Tuesday, residents said, a day after completing their capture of the center of the strategic port city. The country’s dominant Ho... More »
WASHINGTON Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote to colleagues on Monday backing the nuclear agreement with Iran, as congressional Republicans railed against a U.N. vote on the deal. “As you may be aware, I believe tha... More »
HUSSEIN LOOKOUT, Israel As U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter walked along an Israeli lookout near the border with Lebanon, Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon turned to him and said: “Probably Hezbollah is watching us.” Israel warned during Carter’s visit o... More »
UNITED NATIONS Some $3.4 billion in pledges were made at the United Nations on Friday to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea stamp out Ebola and begin rebuilding health systems and economies devastated by the worst outbreak on record of the deadly hemorrhagi... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday granted Afghan requests to slow the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and said he would maintain a force of 9,800 through the end of 2015 while sticking to a 2017 exit plan. Capping a day of VIP t... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Ride-hailing app Uber, under the microscope due to a handful of driver assaults on passengers in some cities, pledged in a blog post to sign up one million female drivers globally by 2020. The ride service did not provide comparable f... More »
BAGHDAD/ERBIL,Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have destroyed ancient remains of the 2,000-year-old city of Hatra in northern Iraq, officials said on Saturday, in their latest attack on Iraqi antiquities which the United Nations condemned as barbarism.... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has warned Indonesia of the potential for diplomatic fallout if Jakarta goes ahead with the looming execution of two Australian citizens on death row for drugs charges. Indonesia has harsh penalties for ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation on Thursday to broaden sanctions against North Korea by imposing stiffer punishments on foreign companies doing business with Pyongyang, a measure that could impact mostly on Chinese firms. “In the w... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Embattled Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he will fight a challenge to his leadership at a party-room meeting next week after disgruntled government lawmakers on Friday sought to oust him following weeks of divisive speculation. A... More »
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian air force strikes killed 82 people in an opposition district outside Damascus following rocket attacks by rebels that hit the government-controlled center of the capital, a monitoring group said on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for H... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon. According to documents obtained by Reuters, U.S. companies can stake claims to lunar territory through an e... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended on Sunday a planned speech to the U.S. Congress about Iran, saying he had a moral obligation to speak out on an issue that poses a mortal threat to Israel. His visit to Washington in March has op... More »
SANAA (Reuters) – Yemen drifted deeper into political limbo on Friday after President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi resigned in exasperation at a Houthi rebel takeover of the country, a move that appeared to catch the Iran-backed group off balance. Hadi, a former gen... More »
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea on Friday demanded the lifting of sanctions, imposed by South Korea after a 2010 attack on one of its naval vessels, as a condition for resuming dialogue. It was the first official response to the South’s offer to talk, including ... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – The known death toll in the Ukraine conflict that began last April now exceeds 5,000 and may be far higher, the United Nations human rights office said on Friday. Fighting has intensified over the past 10 days with the leader of pro-Russian ... More »
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Syria has complained to the United Nations that U.S. Senator John McCain, former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith entered the country without visas in separate visits in violation of i... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said on Thursday a cyber attack on Sony Pictures was a serious national security matter and the Obama administration was considering a proportional response, although the White House stopped short of blaming North Korea... More »
SEOUL (Reuters) – The head of Sony Pictures consulted with a senior U.S. official in June, days after North Korea threatened “merciless countermeasures” over the release of an upcoming film featuring a plot to assassinate leader Kim Jong Un, leaked emails show... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Rome on Sunday for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on developments in Israel and the West Bank, the State Department said on Wednesday. “John Kerry will travel to Rom... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, one of the biggest names in international opera, has stirred controversy by posing with the flag of Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebels and making a donation to the opera house in the separatists’ main stronghold, Don... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s opium crop will hit a new high this year, the United Nations said on Wednesday, presenting the new president with a challenge in tackling the trade fuelling the Taliban-led insurgency after the foreign combat mission ends. Opium... More »
DAKAR (Reuters) – Gold and diamond sales are being used to finance conflict in Central African Republic and United Nations peacekeepers should monitor mining sites to clamp down on illicit trade, a U.N. panel of experts said. In a report, the panel also said t... More »
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) – Burkina Faso’s army cleared thousands of protesters from the capital and opened fire at state TV headquarters on Sunday, killing one person, as it sought to restore order following the resignation of President Blaise Compaore two days a... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York doctor with Ebola, whose case triggered a national debate over mandatory quarantines for health workers returning from West Africa, was upgraded to stable condition on Saturday after nine days of treatment. Dr. Craig Spencer, 33... More »
SURUC Turkey (Reuters) – A first group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters entered the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on Thursday to help push back Islamic State militants who have defied U.S. air strikes and threatened to massacre its Kurdish defenders. Koban... More »
CAPE ELIZABETH Maine (Reuters) – A nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone but has tested negative for the virus went for a bike ride on Thursday, defying Maine’s order that she be quarantined in her home and setting up a legal collision with Governor... More »
MONROVIA/FREETOWN (Reuters) – Australia became the first developed country on Tuesday to shut its borders to citizens of the countries worst-hit by the West African Ebola outbreak, a move those states said stigmatized healthy people and would make it harder to... More »
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The United States does not expect Syrian rebels it plans to train to fight Islamic State militants to also take on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, but sees them as a crucial part of a political solution to end the war, a senior U.S. offi... More »
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House has told states that have imposed mandatory quarantines for some travelers from Ebola-hit West Africa that the policy could impede the fight against the disease, while the first health worker isolated under the r... More »
JAFFNA Sri Lanka (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In the fishing village of Oori, two mothers await news of their young daughters who were taken to a care home three months ago after their alleged rape by members of the Sri Lankan navy. In a lawyer’s office in t... More »
SEOUL (Reuters) – High-ranking military officials from North and South Korea met on Wednesday to discuss recent border altercations including exchanges of fire but they did not resolve their differences, South Korea’s Defence Ministry said. North Korea’s milit... More »
SANAA (Reuters) – The Shi’ite Muslim Houthi movement which seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa last month has extended its control to the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, deploying checkpoints and also taking control of the city’s airport, local officials said. Hodeidah is ... More »
KEREM SHALOM Israel/GAZA (Reuters) – The July-August war in Gaza drew international condemnation for a number of reasons, but one episode proved more deadly than any other: an Israeli air and artillery bombardment on Aug. 1 that killed 150 people in a matter o... More »
MURSITPINAR Turkey/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey’s president said on Tuesday the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani was “about to fall” as Islamic State fighters pressed home a three-week assault that has cost a reported 400 lives and forced thousands to flee their hom... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – The children of refugees who fled Lebanon’s civil war for peaceful Australia in the 1970s form a majority of Australian militants fighting in the Middle East, according to about a dozen counter-terrorism officials, security experts and Musli... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu meet for a new round in their often-tense relationship on Wednesday, facing differences over Iran diplomacy and Middle East peace efforts as well as complications from the U.S.-led f... More »
MANCHESTER England (Reuters) – Britain’s monarch is famously above politics, but Prime Minister David Cameron was overheard on Tuesday saying Queen Elizabeth had “purred” with happiness when he phoned her to inform her Scotland had voted to reject independence... More »
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian Kurdish fighters have halted an advance by Islamic State fighters to the east of a predominantly Kurdish town near the border with Turkey, a spokesman for the main armed Kurdish group said. “Fierce clashes are still under way but the ... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani was named president-elect on Sunday after he signed a deal to share power with his opponent, ending months of turmoil over an election that destabilized the country as most foreign troops prepare to... More »
FREETOWN (Reuters) – A team burying Ebola victims was attacked in Sierra Leone’s capital on Saturday, a member of parliament said, as a small group defied a three-day lockdown aimed at halting the worst outbreak of the disease on record. In one of the most ext... More »
UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will not stand in the way of Venezuela securing a temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council in 2015-16 after Latin American and Caribbean states unanimously endorsed its bid, U.N. diplomats and U.S. sou... More »
EDINBURGH (Reuters) – Scots began voting in an independence referendum on Thursday that will decide the fate of the United Kingdom, after opinion polls showed hundreds of thousands of them were still agonizing over whether to stay with the 307-year union or ba... More »
MARIUPOL/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) – A ceasefire struck between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists was largely holding on Monday in eastern Ukraine, although Kiev accused the rebels of sporadic violations overnight, especially near the por... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States needs to do more to help control West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak to stop it becoming a global crisis that could one day threaten Americans, President Barack Obama said in an interview. Obama told NBC’s “Meet the Pre... More »
KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko reached agreement with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday on a “permanent ceasefire” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region, Poroshenko’s press office said. There was no immediate sign on the ... More »
KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s military said on Monday its forces were battling a Russian tank battalion for control of a vital airport in the east of the country as President Petro Poroshenko accused Moscow of “direct and open aggression” against his country. Ukr... More »
EIN ZIVAN Golan Heights (Reuters) – Heavy fighting between Syrian army forces and rebels erupted on the Golan Heights on Monday, a Reuters photographer said, but it was unclear if either of the two sides had gained an advantage to control a key frontier crossi... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – Islamic State forces are committing atrocities amounting to crimes against humanity against minorities while Iraqi government forces have executed detainees and shelled civilian areas in acts that may constitute war crimes, the United Nation... More »
MOSCOW/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) – Pro-Moscow rebels fighting in Ukraine said on Friday they would comply with a request from the Kremlin and open up a ‘humanitarian corridor’ to allow the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops they have encircled. It was not clear ho... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli air strikes launched before dawn on Tuesday killed two Palestinians and destroyed much of one of Gaza’s tallest apartment and office buildings, setting off huge explosions and wounding 20 people, Palestinian health officials ... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – One of two candidates competing to succeed Afghan leader Hamid Karzai threatened on Tuesday to pull out of a U.N.-supervised audit of a disputed presidential election, undermining a process meant to defuse a standoff between the contenders. T... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli air strikes killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza, including the wife and infant son of Hamas’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, in what the group said on Wednesday was an attempt to assassinate him after a ceasefire collapsed. Accus... More »
GAZA (Reuters) – In a ward at Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, child therapist Rabeea Hamouda is trying to elicit a response from two small brothers, Omar and Mohammed, aged three and 18 months, hoping for some words or perhaps a smile. For seven straight minut... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A new, five-day truce between Israel and Hamas appeared to be holding on Thursday despite a shaky start, after both sides agreed to give Egyptian-brokered peace negotiations in Cairo more time to try to end the Gaza war. The Israeli ... More »
KAMENSK-SHAKHTINSKY Russia (Reuters) – Dozens of heavy Russian military vehicles massed on Friday near the border with Ukraine, while Ukrainian border guards crossed the frontier to inspect a huge Russian aid convoy. Kiev has said the humanitarian aid might be... More »
CONAKRY (Reuters) – Staff with the World Health Organisation battling an Ebola outbreak in West Africa see evidence the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimates the scale of the outbreak, the U.N. agency said on its website on Thursday. The d... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – The estimated death toll in the Ukraine conflict nearly doubled to at least 2,086 as of Aug. 10 from 1,129 on July 26, the United Nations human rights office said on Wednesday. “This corresponds to a clear escalating trend. ” U.N. human righ... More »
GAZA/CAIRO (Reuters) – The threat of renewed war in Gaza loomed on Wednesday as the clock ticked toward the end of a three-day ceasefire without a sign of a breakthrough in indirect talks in Cairo between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli negotiators return... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli negotiators were due in Cairo on Monday for talks on ending a month-old Gaza war with Palestinian militants, an Israeli government official said, after a new 72-hour truce brokered by Egypt appeared to be holding. The Israeli... More »
WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday the threat of a direct intervention by Russia’s military in Ukraine has risen over the last couple of days. “We have reasons to suspect – we have been receiving such information in the last... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinians accused Israel of breaking its own ceasefire on Monday by launching a bomb attack on a refugee camp in Gaza City that killed an eight-year-old girl and wounded 29 other people. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qi... More »
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s government said more than 20 people had been killed in the latest battles between factions seeking to control Tripoli airport on Sunday, while fighting led to a huge fire raging nearby at the city’s fuel depot. Rival factions allied... More »
VALLETTA August 4 (Reuters) – The British survey ship HMS Enterprise has arrived in Malta carrying 110 Britons evacuated from Libya, where fighting between rival armed factions has spread in the capital. The British ambassador to Libya, Michael Aron, said in a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Katy Perry, Jason Derulo and Stevie Wonder were all there – but the only guest who got to give President Barack Obama a hug during his speech was restaurant owner Tim Harris. Harris has Down syndrome, but he owns his own restaurant and i... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Gaza ceasefire was in jeopardy just hours after it began on Friday, with the Islamist group Hamas saying Israeli tank fire killed four people and Israel accusing militants of violating the truce. The 72-hour break announced in a jo... More »
BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The European Union and the United States on Tuesday announced further sanctions against Russia, targeting its energy, banking and defense sectors in the strongest international action yet over Moscow’s support for rebels in east... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli fire killed at least 43 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday as the Jewish state said it targeted Islamist militants at dozens of sites across the coastal enclave, while Egyptian mediators prepared a revised ceas... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel eased its assaults in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian rocket fire from the enclave declined sharply on Monday, the military said, with both the United States and United Nations calling for a durable ceasefire. As international ... More »
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The United Nations has reported alarming rates of malnutrition in the Somali capital where aid agencies cannot meet the needs of 350,000 people due to insufficient funds, drought and conflict. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Human... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pressed regional proxies to nail down a Gaza ceasefire on Friday as the civilian death toll soared, threatening to spread Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed to the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. With ... More »
DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) – A train carrying the remains of many of the 298 victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 arrived in a Ukrainian government-held city on Tuesday on the first leg of their final journey home to be reclaimed by their families. Five ref... More »
DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian army tanks were reported to be launching an assault to break pro-Russian rebels’ hold on the eastern city of Donetsk on Monday in the first major outbreak of hostilities in the area since Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was ... More »
HRABOVE Ukraine/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laid out what he called overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as international horror deepened over the fate of the victims’ r... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinian militants on Monday after they crossed the border from Gaza through two tunnels, the military said, as the death toll from the two-week conflict passed 500. With the U.N. Security Council... More »
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel stepped up its ground offensive in Gaza early on Friday pounding targets with artillery fire and using tanks and infantry to battle Hamas fighters. Orange flashes illuminated the eastern Gaza Strip as Israeli gunboats off the ... More »
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is fighting for his political life as a Sunni insurgency fractures the country, said on Wednesday he hoped parliament could form a new government in its next session after the first collapsed in disc... More »
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. expert panel has concluded that a shipment of rockets and other weapons that was seized by Israel came from Iran and represents a violation of the U.N. arms embargo on Tehran, according to a confidential report obtained by Reu... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia suspects a virus that has killed hundreds of people there may have arrived in camels from the Horn of Africa, and could ban such imports until it knows more, the kingdom’s chief scientist told Reuters. Any ban on the camel trade... More »
BRUSSELS/SLAVIANSK Ukraine (Reuters) – Western powers warned Russia on Wednesday that they could impose new sanctions if Moscow did not do more to defuse the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where a ceasefire between Russian-speaking rebels and government forces a... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah on Wednesday demanded election organisers stop counting ballots because of what he said was widespread fraud, potentially derailing what is seen as a make-or-break vote before most foreign troop... More »
LONDON, June 5 (Reuters) – A dramatic upward revision in the number of people killed by the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia may signal a fresh approach from Riyadh, but also raises new questions about how the two-year-old outbreak has been handled. Experts in globa... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China deployed its vast security apparatus on Wednesday to snuff out commemoration of the suppression of pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square 25 years ago, flooding the streets with police as censors scrubbed the Internet clean of... More »
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Major airlines want real-time tracking for commercial aircraft following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines (MASM.KL ) flight MH370 and cost is not a concern, a senior official with the United Nations’ aviation agency said on Monda... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – A bored security guard, a Kalashnikov rifle over his shoulder, stands guard alone outside an idle construction site for a 10-storey building in downtown Kabul, one of more than a dozen concrete shells with not a single construction worker in ... More »
