Increasingly besieged at home by working class struggles against his draconian labour laws, French President Emmanuel Macron travelled to the other side of the world this week for a six-day visit to Australia and the nearby French outpost of New Caledonia. While Macron is undoubtedly seeking to use the trip to shore up his position […]

Washington –President Donald Trump has requested options for reducing the number of US troops in South Korea, the New York Times reported late Thursday, citing several people briefed on the matter. The President’s request of the Defense Department comes ahead of his highly anticipated sit-down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, expected to take place along the […]

 The most recent air pollution data from the World Health Organization gives India a dubious lead. The world’s ten most polluted cities are Indian. The air quality database for 2016 was released by WHO on Wednesday and showed that the north Indian industrial city of Kanpur had the highest measured levels of PM2.5, or small […]

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has urged Donald Trump not to walk away from an international deal designed to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Speaking to the BBC, Mr Guterres said there was a real risk of war if the 2015 agreement was not preserved. Mr Trump has been a strong critic of the accord, […]

Armenian opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan called for a general strike Wednesday after falling short in his bid to be the country’s next prime minister. Pashinyan was the only candidate up for consideration to replace former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan, who resigned in April. He needed 53 votes from the 105-seat Armenian National Assembly to secure the […]

Defense Secretary James Mattis on Tuesday sought to temper media reports that the Pentagon has taken a more optimistic outlook on Afghanistan, a day after a pair of suicide bombings in Kabul killed at least 35 people, including 10 journalists. Mattis, when asked how to reconcile the bombings with recent Pentagon statements suggesting an improving outlook, said he would “not […]

Bowing to pressure from African-American activists, Starbucks excluded the Anti-Defamation League from an upcoming daylong anti-bias training session. The ADL, whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism, will play an advisory role in the company’s long-term efforts to combat discrimination, Jaime Riley, a Starbucks spokeswoman, told POLITICO Monday. But the group won’t help develop the curriculum […]

SEOUL  – North and South Korea began dismantling loudspeakers that blared propaganda across their heavily fortified border on Tuesday, South Korea’s defense ministry said, fulfilling a promise made at last week’s historic summit. The moves are the first practical, if small, steps toward reconciliation after Friday’s meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the […]

NEW YORK  – Oil prices slid more than 1 percent on Tuesday as the dollar remained near a four-month high, but worries that U.S. President Donald Trump will pull out of the Iran nuclear deal underpinned the market. The U.S. dollar .DXY surged into positive territory for 2018 and broke past key levels against several […]

ANKARA/ISTANBUL, April 26 – The editor-in-chief of Turkey’s opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper said on Thursday he was unbowed by a government crackdown and would not abandon journalism, a day after a court sentenced him and more than a dozen colleagues to prison on terrorism charges. Murat Sabuncu was one of 14 Cumhuriyet staff given sentences ranging […]