Browsing: News

Syrian rebels in the northern Damascus district of Barzeh on Sunday agreed a local ceasefire with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after nearly a year of fighting and bombardment, activists said. “After intense negotiation in recent days between the…

Editor’s note: the author, Zhenyu Li, a contributing columnist for some of the world’s premier publications and editor-in-chief of the business channel at the People’s Daily Online, a publication of China’s Communist Party. BEIJING, China — For the…

EDINBURGH, Scotland — In the United States, where drinking alcohol in public is prohibited, police routinely turn a blind eye to people sipping from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. A similar system has existed in the Scottish capital for almost…

Millions of people in the United States hunkered down Sunday in anticipation of brutal weather from a dangerous Arctic blast that forecasters warn could send temperatures plummeting to their coldest in 20 years. The northeast of the country and parts…

Four skiers were killed and another was in a critical condition after a series of avalanches hit the Alps in southern Switzerland Sunday, Swiss media reported. Three of the victims, including a guide, died when a wall of snow bore down on a group of…

Syria’s main opposition National Coalition re-elected Ahmad Jarba as its leader during a general assembly meeting in Istanbul on Sunday, the coalition said in a statement. Jarba won 65 votes, beating his only rival Riad Hijab — the best-known defector…

Nigeria is repatriating over 1,600 citizens who have sought refuge in its embassy in Bangui, fleeing violence wracking the Central African Republic, an army spokesman said Sunday. “The Federal Government has … arranged several chartered flights to…

A private jet plane crashed on Sunday at Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, which serves the famous Colorado skiing resort, local and federal officials told AFP. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said an accident had taken place at…

US President Barack Obama ended his vacation in sunny Hawaii and boarded Air Force One for a flight back home to chilly Washington. Obama arrived in his native Hawaii on December 21 along with his wife Michelle and daughters Sasha, 12, and Malia, 15…

Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was freed by Moscow last month after a decade in jail, vowed Sunday to fight for Russian political prisoners from his new base in Switzerland. “You can’t live with peace of mind when you know there are political…

Turkey’s embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday he would favour retrials for hundreds of military officers jailed for coup-plotting. In the latest sign of the turmoil that has gripped Turkish politics since the government was hit…

The seizure by Al-Qaeda-linked militants of a major Iraqi city and parts of another illustrates their resurgence, and harkens back to the darkest days of the insurgency that followed the 2003 US-led invasion. The Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq fell from…

Good day, all, and welcome to this Sunday’s edition of the Weekend Wrap-up. We’re taking a look at some of the bigger tech stories from the past week to help you get all caught up, and we’ve even thrown in some video for good measure. Ready to…

Exiled Uzbek dissidents broke into the Geneva home of President Islam Karimov’s eldest daughter last month, publishing images of items allegedly taken from the Uzbek national museum, according to a report Sunday. The members of a dissident group called…

We have wide open spaces and highways 8 lanes wide- but do Americans really do more of their travel by car than people in the rest of the world? What about trains? How do the subway and “L” commuters in New York and Chicago stack up against the…

Geologists on Sunday reported insights into super-volcanoes, the brooding, enigmatic giants of Earth’s crust whose eruptions are as catastrophic as they are rare. The buoyancy of molten rock, or magma, is the key explanation as to why these monsters…

Jihadists killed at least 31 rival rebels in northern Syria as clashes raged on a new front in the country’s brutal war, a monitor said Sunday, citing insurgents and medics. Fighting flared on Friday between rebels and forces loyal to the Islamic State…

Eusebio, revered as football’s “Black Panther”, died on Sunday, aged 71, sending fans into mourning for a man who grew up in grinding African poverty to become one of the world’s greatest players. Eusebio da Silva Ferreira, who died of cardio-pulmonary…

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir will visit South Sudan Monday, state radio said, as negotiators in Ethiopia prepared formal ceasefire talks over three weeks of fighting in the world’s youngest country. Radio Omdurman said Sunday that Bashir would meet…

The bronze statute of Benfica legend Eusebio in front of Lisbon’s Stadium of Light was covered with flowers, scarves and messages as Portugal mourned the iconic striker’s death on Sunday. Widely regarded as Portugal’s greatest player before the meteoric…