World News

A Russian fighter jet flew within 10 feet of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The U.S. transferred a total of $1.7 billion in cash to Iran in order to settle a long-running dispute over a failed 1979 arms deal, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

A U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after a fast-attack craft from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps came within 100 yards (91 meters) of it in the central Gulf on Sunday, U.S. Defense Department officials said on Tuesday.

An Iranian Grand Ayatollah recently said that the Mahdi – the Shi’ite version of the messiah – will arrive in a “super-modern vessel like a spaceship” and that until that time there will be no “peace, security, or decency” on earth.

The United States and Russia struggled Monday to keep alive negotiations to end the bloodshed between US-backed rebels and Syria’s Russian-aligned regime. Even as top diplomats vowed to keep trying, President Barack Obama expressed skepticism that an unlikely alliance between rivals would yield the breakthrough needed to end the 5-year-old civil war.

Despite formidable opposition across the political spectrum, President Barack Obama is using his final months in office to fight for congressional approval of a 12-nation free trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The United States and its negotiating partners agreed “in secret” to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters.

The UN has awarded contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to people closely associated with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, as part of an aid program that critics fear is increasingly at the whim of the government in Damascus, a Guardian investigation has found.

Growing resistance to antibiotics has complicated efforts to rein in common sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday as it issued new treatment guidelines.

News of the death of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, have been largely exaggerated.

Tehran has deployed a recently delivered Russian-made long-range missile system to central Iran to protect its Fordo nuclear facility, state television said Sunday.

The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned four North Korean ballistic missile launches in July and August on Friday night, calling them “grave violations” of a ban on all ballistic missile activity.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov began talks in Geneva Friday in an effort to negotiate a peaceful end to the fighting in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces carried out at least two chemical attacks in Syria in the past two years and the Islamic State also used mustard gas as a weapon, the United Nations reported Wednesday.

Four of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vessels “harassed” a U.S. warship on Tuesday near the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. defense official said, amid Washington’s concerns about Iran’s posture in the Gulf and in the Syrian civil war.

North Korea fired a submarine-launched missile on Wednesday that flew about 500 km (311 miles) towards Japan, a show of improving technological capability for the isolated country that has conducted a series of launches in defiance of UN sanctions.

A new report by two Johns Hopkins University scientists reveals that scientific evidence does not support the claim that homosexuals are “born that way.”

Russia has approached Turkey to request use of the U.S.-built Incirlik air base.

Russia will stop using a base in Iran for airstrikes targeting militants in Syria for the time being, Iran’s foreign ministry said Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has outflanked Washington again in the Syrian civil war by launching bombers this week from a new base — Iran — giving him the power to strike more quickly with heavier bombardments against U.S.-backed rebels, analysts say.