World News

A magnitude 5.7 earthquake in northwestern Iran on Sunday killed nine people, including children, in neighboring Turkey and injured dozens on both sides of the border, authorities said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) confirmed the death of its leader, Qassim al-Raymi, and appointed his successor, a jihadist monitoring agency said Sunday.

A dozen towns in northern Italy effectively went into lockdown Saturday after the deaths of two people infected with the new virus from China and a growing cluster of cases with no direct links to the origin of the outbreak abroad.

An Iranian group is reportedly threatening to destroy what local Jews believe to be the ancient burial site of Queen Esther and Mordechai in Hamedan in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

Australia’s hottest and driest year on record has slashed crop production, with summer output expected to fall to the lowest levels on record, according to official projections released Tuesday.

South Korea reported its first death from the COVID-19 virus, formerly known as coronavirus, on Thursday, a day after two people died in Iran from having contracted the Chinese virus.

The European Union’s first post-Brexit summit Thursday in Brussels promises to be a contentious one. The subject is money — how to fill a nearly $65 billion budget gap left by Britain’s departure from the bloc.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday said the United States will sink like the ‘Titanic,’ blaming it on ‘wealthy Zionist individuals and corporate owners’ who he said controlled the US economy.

Talks between Russia and Turkey meant to reduce tensions in northwestern Syria did not yield a ‘satisfactory result’ for Ankara, but both sides agreed to continue negotiations, a spokesman for Turkey’s president said Tuesday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed on Tuesday a group of Democratic senators who reportedly met in secret with Iran’s foreign minister during a foreign policy conference held over the weekend in Germany.

Locusts swarming across eastern Africa have now made their way out of the continent, into the Middle East, and as far as India, Pakistan, and China, though authorities in east Asia say they are not yet worried about the locusts coming further inland.

The impact of the spreading coronavirus risks bringing to life the worst-case economic scenarios contained in China’s annual banking stress tests. Last year’s exercise envisaged annual economic growth slowing to as low as 4.15% — a scenario which showed that the bad loan ratio at the nation’s 30 biggest banks would rise five-fold. Analysts now say that the outbreak could send first-quarter growth to as little as 3.8%.

Iran is ready to strike the United States and Israel if they give it any reason to do so, the head of the elite Revolutionary Guards said in a live speech on state television.

The United Arab Emirates will become the first Arab state with a nuclear power plant as it gained approval from its regulatory watchdog on Monday.

The economy took another battering from the consumption tax increase in the last quarter, contracting by the most in more than five years and fueling recession concerns as the widening coronavirus outbreak hits activity.

US President Donald Trump has called for Russia to end its support for the Syrian regime’s ‘atrocities’ as he expressed US concern over violence in the Idlib region, the White House said Sunday.

Iranian dissidents opposed to the hardline regime in Tehran are urging their fellow citizens not to vote in next week’s elections, which they describe as a ‘sham’ — calling on them to instead work to overthrow the struggling regime.

The Taliban appeared confident Monday it will sign a peace agreement with the United States by the end of this month in the presence of international guarantors to close the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The number of deaths from the coronavirus in China rose to more than 1,700 on Monday as international experts began a joint mission with their Chinese counterparts to tackle the epidemic.

Rockets hit a U.S.-led military coalition’s Baghdad headquarters early on Sunday but caused no casualties, a coalition spokesman said, in the latest attack to target U.S. facilities in Iraq.