BEIJING: Sri Lanka's new president held talks Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping amid a push to recalibrate his predecessor's strongly pro-China policies and a review of major Chinese projects in the island nation. Maithripala Sirisena and Xi reaffirmed longstanding ties between their countr

US President Barack Obama today said he would keep 9,800 American troops in Afghanistan through the end of 2015, at the conclusion of talks with his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani. "Based on President Ghani's request for flexibility in the US draw down timeline, the US will maintain its current

MARSEILLE: An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote area of southern France and all 148 on board were feared dead. French President Francois Hollande said he believed none of those on board had survived. “There were 148 people on board,” Hollande said. “

KABUL: Gunmen killed 13 passengers travelling on a bus in Afghanistan on Tuesday, underlining the country's fragile security situation as President Ashraf Ghani holds talks with the United States in Washington. The attack in Wardak province, which lies close to Kabul, is the latest to hit civilia

WASHINGTON: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says his country and Washington have common interests at stake in the fight against extremism, describing how Afghans see the United States as "critical" to the country's future. "While tragedy brought us together, there are common interests that now can

(Reuters) - A Syrian military helicopter crashed in northwestern Syria on Sunday and at least four of its crew were captured by rebels, according to a monitoring group. Video footage on social media showed a helicopter crashing in the distance. Photographs posted showed one of the crew apparently

In a fresh rebuke to Benjamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama said the Israeli leader's pre-election disavowal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes it "hard to find a path" toward serious negotiations to resolve the issue. In an interview with the Huffington Post, O

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran's top leader voiced mistrust on Saturday of U.S. efforts to reach a nuclear deal, even as Washington spoke of "genuine progress" towards an outline accord.   With just 10 days remaining until an end-of-March deadline, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei de

UNITED NATIONS: Almost all of the 436 mosques in the Central African Republic have been destroyed by months of vicious fighting between Christians and Muslims, the US ambassador to the United Nations said on Tuesday, calling the devastation "kind of crazy, chilling." Samantha Power spoke to repor

WASHINGTON: A Republican-led US congressional panel has formally asked Hillary Clinton to hand over her private computer server, ramping up scrutiny over her use of a personal email address while secretary of state. Clinton has come under pressure for using a private address and email server rath

Sanaa (AFP) - Triple suicide bombings killed 77 people and wounded 121 others Friday at mosques in the Yemeni capital attended by Shiite Huthi militiamen who have seized the city, medics said. One suicide bomber struck inside Badr mosque in southern Sanaa while another targeted worshippers as they

Expressing deep concern at the increasing number of executions in Pakistan, the United Nations has asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif government to reinstate the moratorium on death penalty as soon as possible. "The UN has consistently called for an unequivocal end to the execution of anyone, anyw

Cairo (AFP) - An Egyptian court Wednesday sentenced 22 supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to death for an attack on a police station in which one officer was killed. The attack in the town of Kerdasa on the outskirts of Cairo on July 3, 2013 came on the same day that army chief

Tunisia's prime minister says 21 people are dead after an attack on a major museum, including 17 foreign tourists, and that two or three of the attackers remain at large. Habib Essid told national television that the foreigners included tourists from Poland, Italy, Germany and Spain. He said t

Haifa – With more than 99 percent of the votes tallied, Israel’s incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears poised to retain his office and form the next government. Though the final campaign polls showed Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party trailing behind the centre-left Zionist Union, h

JAKARTA: A strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake hit Indonesia's Molucca Sea today, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami alert was issued and there were no reports of damage. The quake struck at a depth of 41 kilometres (25 miles), 134 kilometres northwest of Kota Ternate at 0342 IST yesterday

(Reuters) - A group monitoring the Syrian civil war said on Tuesday government forces carried out a poison gas attack that killed six people in the northwest, and medics posted videos of children suffering what they said was suffocation. A Syrian military source described the report of an attack

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan hanged 12 male convicts on Tuesday, an interior ministry spokesman said, the largest number of people executed on the same day since an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in December. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted a de facto moratorium on capital punis