World

Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the future of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank would be among the first issues to be negotiated if the Palestinians resume direct peace talks.

US prosecutors named top Al-Qaeda leaders in an alleged attempt to bomb New York's subway, saying their failed plot was part of a Pakistan-based campaign against US and British cities.

A French court convicted Panama's former dictator Manuel Noriega of laundering drug money Wednesday and handed down a seven- year sentence, jailing him again after two decades in a US prison.

Authorities seized a large, home-built submarine in a marsh near the Colombian border that was designed to carry as much as 12 tons of cocaine to Mexico, Ecuador's Antinarcotics Police chief Joel Loaiza said Tuesday.

The French parliament on Tuesday began debating a ban on the full Islamic veil that is all but certain to be adopted despite fears of renewed tensions in the country with Europe's biggest Muslim minority.

Britain on Tuesday unveiled details of an inquiry into claims its security services were complicit in the torture of suspected violent extremists on foreign soil after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A few months before he became Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, met with a group of academics and policy experts, including Arabs and Israelis. With his academic background and immense erudition, he succeeded in painting, on a wide canvass, the new directions of Turkey’s policies under the Justice and Development Party leadership.

Fernando Baldomero was preparing to take his child to school this morning, July 5, when he was shot dead. He was the first activist to be murdered under the presidency of Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III.

When a distraught landlord wielding a kitchen cleaver stormed into a kindergarten classroom in south-east China’s Fujian province in May and killed several people, including children, it was the bloodiest of five recent attacks at schools across the country.

Turkey will sever diplomatic ties with Israel unless it apologises over the commando raid on an aid convoy to Gaza in which nine Turks died, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying Monday.

Authorities at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport briefly evacuated one of its airport terminals after a bomb scare on one of the busiest US holiday travel days.

Security forces fanned out across China's Urumqi city on Monday, the first anniversary of deadly unrest that laid bare deep-seated ethnic tensions in the country's far-western Xinjiang region.

Two French ministers resigned Sunday after rows over the spending of thousands of euros of taxpayers' money on a private jet and cigars at a time when budget cuts are hitting the public.

Not surprisingly, the domestic work industry in the US has roots in slavery. Because of its fraught history, domestic work - like farm work, the other traditional slave occupation in the US - has never been subject to any legal protections.

A battle is brewing over an Indonesian television station that highlights not only the notorious pliability of the country’s legal system but also marks the re-emergence into the public light of a prominent member of the family of the late strongman Suharto, who was driven from power in 1998 in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis.

But will the 2010 World Cup bring African women more than just fodder for gossip? The label “soccer mom” has become common in the US, as more women enroll their children in soccer camps. Will holding the world’s greatest single sporting event in Africa spark similar interest for the continent’s women?

Twenty-seven-year-old Maria Puscariu is about to complete her MA in philosophy at a Belgian university. The Moldovan has been working for over five years as a domestic worker in Western Europe in order to support herself and finance her studies.

New Philippine President Benigno Aquino may already be rueing his inaugural pledge to suffer Manila's congested roads alongside his compatriots, after his limousine got stuck in traffic on Friday.

The shooting of an American backpacker revived crime worries at the World Cup, but organisers insisted Thursday that the tournament remains on track on the eve of the quarter-finals.

A defiant Iran said on Thursday it has told UN Security Council members that new sanctions will not affect its nuclear programme, prompting France to say Tehran was not heading in the right direction.

Turkey's foreign minister and an Israeli cabinet minister met secretly in Brussels to discuss ways of overcoming the deep crisis in bilateral ties, a Turkish official said Thursday.

The Obama appointee managing BP's oil spill disaster fund said there's "not enough money in the world" to pay all claims and suggested home owners with plunging property values could lose out.

US President Barack Obama is set to sign a sweeping package of tough new energy and financial sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, the White House has said.