US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, an Israeli official said, amid efforts to secure a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza. A second Israeli official said some progress had been made in the indirect talks between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, mediated…
The German military will establish a new division tasked exclusively with territorial defense, the army said on Saturday, bringing all existing reserve units under direct army command. The reorganization will take effect in April and raise the number of German divisions – units of some 20,000 troops – to four without increasing the total number…
The new Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Saturday his first official overseas trip would be to Saudi Arabia during a call with the Kingdom’s Crown Prince, the president’s office said. Lawmakers elected the 61-year-old army chief on Thursday, bringing to an end two years without a president for the multi-confessional, crisis-wracked country. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed…
Lebanon and Syria will work together to secure their land borders, as well as to delineate both land and sea borders, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Saturday in Damascus. In the first trip by a Lebanese prime minister to neighboring Syria in 15 years, Mikati addressed a joint news conference in Damascus…
Mediator Qatar said it briefed US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Friday about Gaza ceasefire talks it has been brokering alongside Egypt and the United States. In their meeting in Doha, Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani discussed with Witkoff “the latest developments in the region, especially the…
Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party said late on Thursday it will choose a new leader on March 9 ahead of the 2025 elections for which polls show the party in a very weak position. The prime minister announced on Monday that he will step down in the coming months after nine years…
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai will attend a summit on girls’ education hosted by her native Pakistan, where she was nearly killed by militants as a schoolgirl. Yousafzai was evacuated from the country in 2012 after being shot by the Pakistan Taliban, who were enraged by her activism, and she has returned to the…
The Kremlin said Friday that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks with Donald Trump, after the incoming US president said a meeting between the pair was being set up. “The president has repeatedly stated his openness to contact with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Trump,…
US President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin wanted to meet and that a rendezvous between the pair was being arranged. He made the statement just a week and a half before taking office, following promises during his campaign to bring peace to Ukraine, which has been under Russian invasion since February…
Ukraine expects high-level contact with the new US administration immediately after Donald Trump takes office, including an eventual meeting between the US president-elect and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv said on Friday. Kyiv sees cultivating close ties with Trump as a paramount goal and has been making overtures to the Republican who won the US presidential…
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will on Saturday make his first official trip to neighboring Syria since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad, his office told AFP. Mikati’s office said Friday the trip came at the invitation of the country’s new de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa during a phone call last week. Syria imposed new…
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani met Syria’s new ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus Friday, state media said, in the latest such visit from a European diplomat since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. State news agency SANA did not give further details about Tajani and al-Sharaa’s discussions, just over a month after the opposition seized Damascus…
Ukraine hit a Russian ammo depot and drone storage facility in a drone and missile attack in the early hours of Friday, a Ukrainian security source said. The source in the SBU security service said it had launched the joint operation with the navy, Kyiv’s latest cross-border aerial attack on Russian territory. Russian officials earlier…
The European Union could begin lifting sanctions on Syria if the war-torn country’s new rulers take steps to form an inclusive government that protects minorities, the bloc’s top diplomat said Friday. “The EU could gradually ease sanctions provided there is tangible progress,” foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas wrote on X, a day after a meeting…
