BEIRUT, January 19 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he believed peace talks in Kazakhstan would lead to local “reconciliation” deals with rebels, a sign of his confidence in a process launched by his Russian allies after the opposition’s defeat in Aleppo. Assad told a Japanese TV station he hoped theRead More

Washington, January 19 Former US President George HW Bush and his wife, former First Lady Barbara Bush, have both been hospitalised, media reports said. Bush’s spokesman Jim McGrath told CNN that the 41st President has been hospitalised at Houston Methodist Hospital since Saturday, and later said in a statement theRead More

Washington: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said “we have to wait” to see how US President-elect Donald Trump performs in the White House and that he did not think he could be “worse” than his outgoing American counterpart Barack Obama. “We have to wait. Regarding President Donald Trump, the big internationalRead More

  Brussels: EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini on Monday advised the incoming Donald Trump administration against moving the US embassy to Jerusalem as she “worried” about a possible worldwide popular backlash. Mogherini said the European Union delegation will keep its embassy in Tel Aviv and continue to respect UNRead More

Columbia: US President Barack Obama on Monday marked the first anniversary of the nuclear deal with Iran by emphasizing its “significant and concrete results” and warning the incoming Trump administration against undoing a pact supported by the world`s major powers. In language clearly directed at Donald Trump, who is setRead More

London: UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon today said the US-led coalition has made substantial progress in Syria and Iraq, leading to the liberation of over 2 million people from Islamic State (IS) control in the last year. In a Ministry of Defence (MoD) statement, he said the UK was steppingRead More

Oslo: Some 300 US Marines arrived in Norway today for a rotational deployment in the Scandinavian country, to neighbouring Russia’s dismay amid rising tensions with the West. After leaving North Carolina aboard a chartered 747 last evening, the troops landed with their luggage and weapons at the Vaernes airport nearRead More

Vienna: The chief of the UN atomic agency says Iran has complied with a key commitment of its nuclear deal with six world powers by removing sensitive equipment from a strategic underground site. Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency said today that Tehran has met a deadline andRead More

Kiev: Outgoing US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine today to support the war-scarred country’s leaders amid concerns that ties could chill under Donald Trump. Biden’s one-day visit to meet President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman was his last to Kiev before leaving office and was aimedRead More

Washington: President-elect Donald Trump wants health “insurance for everybody,” no small feat in a country where millions are uninsured. The Republican has long lashed out at President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, campaigning on a pledge to repeal and replace it. But the billionaire developerRead More