Browsing: World News

Dozens of journalists protested Saturday in Malaysia against the suspension of a weekly magazine, urging the Southeast Asian nation to allow greater press freedom. The Heat stopped publication last month after the Home Ministry suspended it, saying…

Hundreds of Lebanese took to the streets of the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday to protest the torching of a decades-old library owned by a Greek Orthodox priest. The demonstrators held up banners that read “Tripoli, peaceful town” and “This is…

Former first lady Barbara Bush went home Saturday after six days in hospital for pneumonia, a statement from the office of her husband, former president George H.W. Bush, said. The 88-year-old thanked the doctors and nurses at the Texas hospital where…

A blast that killed the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic this week “was not an accident,” despite an official theory to the contrary, the envoy’s daughter said Saturday. “What is certain is that it was not an accident,” Rana al-Jamal, who…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday reversed a blanket ban on protests at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, bowing to pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Russia had initially banned any political protests in the Russian Black…

Americans rekindle their peculiar love affair with the post-Edwardian demise of English aristocracy on Sunday when season four of “Downton Abbey” premieres on US public television. The internationally-acclaimed period drama set in a grand old Yorkshire…

WASHINGTON — A recent political coup. Drug trafficking. One of the world’s highest murder rates. With attributes like those, Honduras may not sound like an easy sell for international investment. But that hasn’t dissuaded the World Bank, whose mission…

A newly formed Syrian rebel alliance has declared war on the powerful Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and joined other opposition groups in battling the extremists. “We, the Army of the Mujahideen, pledge to defend ourselves…

Six Taliban suicide attackers launched an assault on a joint Afghan-NATO base in the east of Afghanistan on Saturday, killing one NATO soldier during a prolonged firefight, officials said. One attacker in an explosives-packed vehicle blew himself up…

The United States vowed Friday that it remained committed to ending the violence in South Sudan, despite evacuating most of its remaining staff from the embassy in Juba. “Even as we draw down our personnel, we continue to be engaged in and strongly…

The US Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to throw out a challenge from a nuns’ group against a birth control mandate in the Obamacare health reform law. The Little Sisters of the Poor had asked the US high court to exempt it from…

A group of nuns in Spain got a New Year surprise when they checked their answerphone machine to discover they had missed a call from the Pope, who left a message asking why they didn’t pick up. “What can the nuns be doing that stops them answering the…

BRUSSELS, Belgium — After five years of economic headlines dominating Europe, politics could be back in 2014. The states of southern Europe will be hoping their fragile signs of recovery after years of recession will firm up in 2014, but no one’…

A high profile French comic, who could be slapped with a rare ban from the national stage, ironically began his career fighting racism before falling from grace as a “trader of hate”. Dieudonne, the burly and bearded comedian known by one name, is no…

An Al-Qaeda-linked Saudi suspect detained in Lebanon is being held in a military hospital because “he is in poor health”, a medical official told AFP Friday. Another official familiar with the investigation said the interrogation of Majid al-Majid “…

Al-Qaeda-linked militants advanced Friday into new areas of one major Iraqi city and held part of another, after days of violence sparked by the removal of an anti-government protest camp. Parts of Ramadi and Fallujah, west of Baghdad, have been held…

Israeli former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s health was in “slow, gradual” decline on Friday, according to the hospital where he has been in a comatose state for eight years. “Tests show a slow, gradual deterioration in the functioning of his vital…

The Foreign Office in London confirmed on Friday that a British national had died in tragic circumstances in Libya. Libyan troops on Thursday found the bodies of a British man and a New Zealand woman shot dead southwest of Tripoli, a security source…

Snow, high winds and a glacial chill hit the northeastern United States on Friday as a blast of brutal wintry weather bore down on many states and major cities, snarling air traffic. Temperatures in New York were expected to drop to 9 degrees Fahrenheit…

2 January 2014 – The United Nations today called on all parties in Lebanon to show restraint following the second…