So this then is the US “Plan B” for Iran – to step up the sanctions pressure in order to force the Tehran government into a new diplomatic deal. It would need to accept broader constraints, not just on its nuclear activities, but also on its missile programme and wider behaviour in the region. But […]

Washington –President Donald Trump has wrenched the United States back to the brink of a constitutional showdown after a weekend of rage culminated in his demand for an investigation into claims that the Obama administration inserted a spy in his 2016 campaign. Trump’s power play injected fresh intensity into his escalating political offensive against the Justice […]

The Syrian military has declared that it has taken full control of all areas around the capital, Damascus, for the first time in six years. “Damascus and its surroundings… are completely secure,” spokesman Gen Ali Mayhoub said on state television. The announcement came after troops cleared Islamic State (IS) militants from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee […]

As Ebola is confirmed in a city with 1.5 million inhabitants, officials warn it could cause “an exponential increase” in cases. There is a “very high” public health risk from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the World Health Organisation has said. The health agency has raised its earlier assessment after one patient […]

Unlike some girls, I’ve never really been devoted to hair straighteners. Sure, I used to flat iron my wavy locks back when my hair was thick and unmanageable (trust me, you don’t want to see my middle school photos!), but once I found a hairstylist who could shape my waves into something beautiful, I never looked back. […]

The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo has spread from the countryside into a city, prompting fears that the disease will be increasingly hard to control. Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga confirmed a case in Mbandaka, a city of a million about 130km (80 miles) from where the first cases were confirmed. The city is a […]

President Donald Trump says “we’ll have to see” if a historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will still happen. Pyongyang threatened to pull out of the meeting if the U.S. insists on denuclearization. “We haven’t been notified at all” about whether Kim plans to cancel the summit, Trump said. President Donald Trump said Wednesday […]

GAZA/JERUSALEM – Palestinian protests on the Gaza-Israel border have dropped off over the past two days, amid reports that Egyptian officials intervened to restore calm after dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire. Gaza’s dominant Islamist Hamas movement denied that it was under pressure from neighboring Egypt to scale back the six-week-old demonstrations, and […]

VATICAN CITY – Thirty-four Chilean bishops summoned to the Vatican over a cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy began crisis meetings with Pope Francis on Tuesday that could result in a purge of Chile’s Catholic hierarchy. “We feel pain and shame,” Fernando Ramos, an auxiliary bishop of Santiago, told a news conference ahead of the […]

GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER – Palestinians buried the dead on Tuesday from the bloodiest day in Gaza in years, after Israeli forces killed 60 Palestinians near the Gaza-Israel border during demonstrations against the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Israeli forces shot dead at least two more Palestinians on Tuesday, although protests were quieter than the […]