A years-long siege that had reduced much of Syria’s largest city to rubble came to an apparent end Tuesday when the last remaining rebels, boxed into a shrinking urban stronghold, agreed to leave Aleppo and hand it over to government forces. The collapse of the rebel forces in Aleppo, announced...
A politician here said Tuesday that he was tortured and sexually abused while being held hostage by Afghanistan’s vice president, the latest development in a sordid episode that has raised serious questions about the rule of law in the country. Speaking with local media, Ahmad Ishchi leveled the...
When the Syrian army, backed by relentless Russian airstrikes, beat back Islamic State from the ancient city of Palmyra early this year, it marked the first in a string of significant defeats against the extremist group in the country. But that victory appeared to have been short-lived. On Sunday,...
Turkey’s ruling party on Saturday proposed constitutional changes that would substantially increase presidential power, a move that comes months after a failed coup. The proposal, introduced by the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came the same day two bombs exploded outside a soccer stadium...
The Pentagon plans to send 200 more troops into northern Syria to support rebel militias now holding positions about 15 miles from Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqah, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Saturday. Carter told a security conference in Manama, Bahrain, that the new troops...
The latest Islamic State video showing captured British war photographer John Cantlie signals a shift in the extremist group’s propaganda as it loses territory, analysts say. At the start of the video released this week Cantlie stands in front of what he describes as a damaged bridge across the...
It’s a driving school like no other, with myriad obstacles and moving hazards that also happen to be alive. There are the bicycle boys, wobbling along, finding their balance in the same vacant stretch of red dirt where drivers learn to shift and motorcyclists learn to ride. Balls sail at multiple...
A white helicopter circling above the central Plaza of Liberty signaled that the long-awaited moment was imminent. Onlookers who had been waiting for hours were lined three and four deep along the narrow streets, straining for a glimpse at this historic cortege. They hoisted children on their shoulders....
In a narrow dirt lane where children scamper and play, Garba Buzu’s rubber sandals slap the ground as he walks. His black prayer beads dangle and swing in his right hand. His shoulders are bent, and his body rolls like a ship with every pace along the alleys of this northern Nigerian city. He wears...
Mexico’s beloved grande dame of death, a stylishly attired skeleton named La Catrina, her grinning skull topped with trademark hat, has company in the market stands here: Hollywood extraterrestrials, Batman and other superheroes, along with sundry witches and monsters. “Ratas baratas! Diez pesos!”...
On the final day before authorities begin to dismantle the Calais refugee camp known as “the Jungle,” dozens of young people headed to a small sanctuary amid the chaos: a graffiti-fronted, one-room cafe — made of plywood and a tarpaulin roof — that has become a regular fixture in their otherwise...
To grasp the size of Arroyo Restaurant, a beloved Mexico City institution since the 1940s, consider first the tortillas. On a busy Sunday, the restaurant’s army of cooks may prepare as many as 15,000 of them, served steaming in insulated fabric pouches. How else would droves of hungry customers...
A hard-line offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, took responsibility for a double bombing in Istanbul that killed 38 people, most of them police officers, and wounded 155 others. The Turkish government declared a national day of mourning on Sunday, hours after the bombings near a soccer...
In the rubble outside Egypt’s main Coptic Christian church late Sunday, a crowd held a candlelight vigil for the 25 worshipers killed in a bombing at St. Mark’s Cathedral earlier in the day. The explosion in a chapel adjacent to the cathedral left pews overturned, the floor bloody, strewn with...
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has established a new marine biosphere reserve covering a broad area that includes the Coronado Islands near the U.S. border and Todos Santos Island, site of a famed surfing spot off the coast of Ensenada. The Pacific Islands Biosphere Reserve, formally established...
Tensions between Donald Trump and U.S. intelligence officials boiled over Saturday as the president-elect’s transition team mockingly compared a secret CIA assessment that Russia tried to sway the U.S. election in Trump's favor to the agency’s misjudgments on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. ...
President Obama has ordered a full review of foreign-based digital attacks that U.S. intelligence agencies say were aimed at influencing this year’s presidential election, a top White House official said Friday. The disclosure came after President-elect Donald Trump again dismissed a blunt U.S....
The impeachment Friday of South Korean President Park Geun-hye was welcomed by millions of people who had been protesting for weeks but opened a new chapter of uncertainty. For one, a constitutional court is now deciding if the impeachment was warranted, leaving open the possibility that Park,...
A far-right Dutch politician who has made attacks on Islam his signature issue was convicted Friday of inciting discrimination – but the court ordered no penalty, and more serious hate-speech charges were dropped. The trial of Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is leading in polls ahead of...
An Egyptian Islamic extremist group claimed responsibility Friday for an explosion in Cairo that killed six police officers and wounded three more. The explosion targeted security forces on Al Haram Street, known as “Pyramids road,” the main route from downtown to the Giza pyramids, according to...
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Friday, saying the U.S. remains committed to supporting the Afghan government against a resilient insurgency. "The United States’ presence … demonstrates to the world that America is and will remain committed to a sovereign...
South Korea’s national legislature on Friday voted to impeach President Park Geun-hye, the latest and most dramatic development in a mushrooming political scandal that has sent millions into the streets in protest. The decision, supported by members of Park’s own conservative ruling party, suspends...
A steep rise in the number of Nigerian prostitutes working in Italy is being linked to the arrival in the country of well-organized Nigerian mafias, which are using violence and religious rites to terrify trafficked women into submission, police say. Police say their operations this year have revealed...
He burst into the national imagination with a stylish mane and sparkling eyes, riding a motorcycle through green fields and singing a patriotic pop song set to lively synthesizer beats. Junaid Jamshed was the voice of a generation of Pakistanis in the 1990s, as the country emerged from a decade...
Aid workers, soldiers and others tore through the rubble of collapsed buildings in the northwestern Indonesian province of Aceh on Wednesday in a frantic search for people trapped by an earthquake that killed more than 100 people. Maj. Gen. Tatang Sulaiman, chief of the army in Aceh province,...
Two months ago, South Korean President Park Geun-hye offered a rare public apology about what was then just a brewing scandal — one that has since mushroomed into a political crisis, prompting millions to participate in historic street protests in recent weeks. Now Park, the daughter of an assassinated...
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as the next ambassador to China, tapping a Republican with long ties to Beijing less than a week after Trump’s controversial phone conversation with the president of Taiwan. The Republican governor was chosen because he...