Prime minister supports Tory chairman in seeking apology for comments about Muslims Theresa May has rebuked Boris Johnson over his claim that Muslim women in burqas resemble letter boxes and bank robbers, urging the former foreign secretary to apologise after he defied an order to do so by Tory chiefs. The prime minister said she agreed […]

WASHINGTON  – The Trump administration expects economic sanctions that it is re-imposing on Iran this week to further cripple the Iranian economy and will aggressively enforce the measures, senior U.S. administration officials said on Monday. The so-called snapback sanctions, due to come into force early on Tuesday, would target Iranian purchases of U.S. dollars, metals […]

JERUSALEM  – Israel would deploy its military if Iran were to try to block the Bab al-Mandeb strait that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday. Last week, Saudi Arabia said it was suspending oil shipments through the strait, on the main sea route from the […]

Zimbabwe’s opposition says its candidate, Nelson Chamisa, has won Monday’s presidential election. The MDC Alliance says the ruling Zanu-PF party is attempting to rig the vote to allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to win, and the delay in releasing official results is unacceptable. The election commission has said there has been no cheating and it needed […]

Rescuers are scrambling to reach hundreds of trekkers stranded on a mountain in Indonesia after a massive earthquake triggered landslides. Early Sunday morning, a 6.4-magnitude quake rocked Lombok Island in Indonesia’s southeast, killing at least 14 people and injuring another 160. Not far from the epicenter, Mount Rinjani was hit with slides that blocked off escape routes, […]

President Trump has often touted his personal chemistry with leaders like Xi Jinping of China or the royal family of Saudi Arabia as the key component of his foreign policy approach. He has described his handshake with Kim Jong-un in Singapore as more important than the terms of the agreement they signed. He has suggested that if […]

Caracas (AFP) – Whether it sparks a social revolution or forces the government to open up the economy, one thing for sure is that Venezuela’s projected one million percent inflation will heap more misery on an already suffering population. Earlier this week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made the stunning projection, adjusting its previous estimate […]

MATI, Greece — They nearly reached the water. As wind-fueled wildfires that killed at least 80 people in vacation areas outside Athens bore down on their seaside resort, 26 men, women and children gathered in the hope that they could find the narrow path leading to a small staircase down to the water. The gated entrance stood […]

US President Donald Trump has traded military threats and counter-threats with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in an exchange alarmingly similar to the fiery war of words with Kim Jong-un last year. These threats of military force are strategic rather than merely random outbursts by an unpredictable and thin-skinned President. We have seen Mr Trump’s game […]

AMMAN  – Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their bombing of an Islamic State bastion along the Jordan-Israel border in southwestern Syria, as the militants pushed into areas abandoned by other rebel groups, diplomatic and opposition sources said. Islamic State-affiliated forces entrenched in the Yarmouk Basin, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Jordan, also […]