International

UN chief Ban Ki-moon is pressing Pakistan to end capital punishment and restore a moratorium on the death penalty the government lifted in terror cases following a Taliban school massacre.

China’s central government fully approves of the leadership of Hong Kong’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying and the work of the territory’s government which has shown itself “unafraid of challenges…

A US federal agency on Friday strongly condemned the raid and closure of the offices of a US-funded radio station in Azerbaijan’s capital by prosecutors and police.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan slammed European countries on Friday for criticizing allegedly deteriorating press freedom in Turkey and said they should instead try to find a solution…

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro congratulated the Castro brothers Friday on Cuba’s rapprochement with Washington, but warned that the embargo on the island would remain for a long time.

Israeli authorities have approved the building of at least 623 settlements on the West Bank in the space of just one week. The decision comes amid growing tensions in the region ahead of a planned…

Two unknown gunmen on a motorcycle have shot and killed a policeman and injured another in Egypt’s Giza early Saturday morning. The two assailants managed to escape. No one has claimed…

Residents of Myanmar’s commercial hub Yangon went to the polls Saturday for the first municipal elections in six decades, with voters hoping for change as the city booms, despite knowing little…

Turkey and Iraq pledged on Thursday to work towards greater military cooperation in their fight against IS militants.

Turkey is already training Kurdish peshmerga fighters in…

Sudan has ordered two senior United Nations officials to leave, the world body said on Thursday, in what appeared to be an escalation of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s move…

Pope Francis on Thursday condemned the “brutal persecution” of minorities by IS insurgents and said the joy of Christmas was marred by the suffering of children in the Middle East and around the…

An 18-year-old black man was shot and killed by police at a gas station late on Tuesday in a St. Louis suburb near where unarmed teen Michael Brown was killed by a white officer in August, police…

Russia said on Wednesday NATO was turning Ukraine into a “frontline of confrontation” and threatened to sever remaining ties with the Atlantic military alliance if Ukraine’s hopes of joining it…

Saudi Arabia’s religious leader, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Asheikh, has said that he does not plan to restrict the minimum age for marriage for women to 15 years, contravening a recent proposal from the…

The United States is using corruption allegations against some Hungarian public officials as a “cover story” to boost its influence in central Europe amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Prime…

US President Barack Obama has welcomed a decision by Sony to screen a comedy about North Korea in a number of US cinemas on Christmas Day.

He had earlier criticized Sony for pulling the…

Separatist rebels have killed at least 52 people in remote villages of India’s north-eastern Assam state, police say.

Women and children were said to be among the victims, amid fears that…

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has called on Turkish officials to take steps to normalize Turkish-Egypt relations, saying that it is inevitable that relations with…

West Africa’s Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015, says a leading researcher who helped to discover the virus.

Peter Piot, who has just returned from Sierra Leone, told the…

The US government is preparing to boost the number of private contractors in Iraq as part of President Barack Obama’s growing effort to beat back IS militants threatening the…

The IS said on Wednesday they had shot down a warplane in the northeastern Syria province of Raqqa and taken the pilot captive. The Britain-based group calling itself Syrian Observatory…

A suicide bomber killed 17 people and wounded 33 others in Madaen, 45 km (15 miles) south of Baghdad on Wednesday, Iraq police and medical officials said. The dead were 14 Sunni pro-…

Two bomb attacks at a bus station and a market in north Nigeria on Monday killed at least 27 people and wounded around 60, officials said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for…

North Korea, amid a cyber security row with the US, experienced a complete Internet outage for hours before links were restored on Tuesday, a US company that monitors internet infrastructure…

The US official responsible for negotiating the transfers of terror suspects from the American-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is leaving his post, the State Department said late Monday.