The Baghdad government recaptured territory across the breadth of northern Iraq from Kurds on Tuesday, widening a sudden and dramatic campaign that has shifted the balance of power in the country almost overnight.In the second day of a lightning government campaign to take back towns and countryside from forces of the Kurdish autonomous region, Kurdish […]

Kurdish Peshmerga forces have retreated to positions they held in northern Iraq in June 2014 in response to an Iraqi army advance into the region after a Kurdish independence referendum rejected by Baghdad, a senior Iraqi commander said on Wednesday.An Iraqi military statement said government forces had taken control of Kurdish-held areas of Nineveh province, […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday laid out a confident vision for a more prosperous nation and its role in the world, stressing the importance of wiping out corruption and curbing industrial overcapacity, income inequality and pollution.Opening a critical Communist Party Congress, Xi pledged to build a “modern socialist country” for a “new era” that […]

Rep. Frederica Wilson blasted President Trump on Wednesday, calling him a “sick man” after he accused the Florida Democrat of fabricating her claim that he made an insensitive remark to the wife of a fallen soldier.“This man is a sick man. He’s cold hearted, and he feels no pity or sympathy for anyone,” Wilson told […]

A chastened Angela Merkel warned her conservatives they must compromise to forge a nationally untested alliance in Germany as she heads into talks with other parties on Wednesday after suffering losses in last month’s election.Merkel’s conservatives, comprising her own Christian Democrats (CDU) and Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), are striving for a tie-up with the […]

The chief of MI5, the United Kingdom’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, has warned that terror attacks will show no sign of abating in the UK in the immediate future.“The threat is multi-dimensional, evolving rapidly and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before. It’s at the highest tempo I have seen in […]

Qatar has accused Saudi Arabia of trying to engineer “regime change” during its four-month blockade of its neighbor.Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told CNBC on Tuesday that Riyadh is attempting to destabilize Qatar’s leadership, Al Jazeera reported.“We see [Saudi] government officials talking about regime change … We see a country that is […]

In a report published on Wednesday, human rights group Amnesty International said Myanmar’s security forces had surrounded villages, shot fleeing inhabitants, set buildings alight and burned to death the elderly and those unable to flee.  “In this orchestrated campaign, Myanmar’s security forces have brutally meted out revenge on the entire Rohingya population of northern Rakhine […]

An explosion ripped through a police truck on Wednesday killing at least seven people in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta, police said. The attack claimed by Pakistani Taliban killed five police officials and two passers-by on the outskirts of the city of Quetta, police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema said, TRT reported. He said 24 people […]

The EU foreign policy chief has reaffirmed the bloc’s commitment to the 2015 international nuclear agreement between Iran and six other countries in the face of the belligerent US rhetoric against the accord. “At a time of acute nuclear threats the European Union is determined to preserve the JCPOA as a key pillar of the international non-proliferation architecture,” Federica […]