LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A military-grade nerve toxin attack on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter may have left them with compromised mental capacity and it is unclear whether they will recover, a British judge said on Thursday. Britain has said Russia used a Soviet-era chemical weapon called Novichok to attack Skripal and […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – China should prepare for military action over self-ruled Taiwan and pressure Washington over cooperation on North Korea after the United States passed a law to boost ties with Taiwan, a widely read Chinese state-run newspaper said on Thursday. Beijing was infuriated when U.S. President Donald Trump signed legislation last week that encourages […]

Israel has for the first time confirmed that it destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor being built in Syria in 2007. The military said fighter jets bombed the al-Kibar facility in Deir al-Zour province, 450km (280 miles) north-east of Damascus, as it neared completion. Syria’s government has repeatedly denied that it was building a reactor. Israeli […]

President Trump is planning to hit China with $60 billion worth of annual tariffs, following up on his threats to punish Beijing for intellectual property theft, The Washington Post reported Monday. Senior aides had provided the president with a $30 billion tariff package — but Trump ordered them to double it, according to the Post. The package, which […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has delivered a fervently nationalistic closing speech to parliament, painting China as the rising global power. Mr Xi said “achieving total unity” was the “collective hope of all Chinese people” and any attempts to divide it were “doomed to fail”. The speech was a strong warning against any attempt at separatism […]

Vladimir Putin won a landslide election victory on Sunday — the fourth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea — extending his presidency by another six years as he easily breezed past a field of minor candidates left by the disqualification of his only credible rival. If Putin serves to the end of his new fourth […]

After firing at least eleven missiles overnight into Palestinian lands east of Gaza city, several Israeli army vehicles and tanks invaded, on Monday morning, agricultural lands in Abasan village, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the coastal region. Media sources said the Israeli tanks, and armored bulldozers, came from a military base, […]

Russian voters go the polls on March 18 to choose a president, but there’s not much to truly decide. Vladimir Putin will win his fourth term after 18 years in power. But behind the scenes of an election with a foregone conclusion — an event that should be drama-free — a more complicated picture emerges. […]

Distance commentary is never a healthy task. And with Syria, with the drumbeat of shrapnel in children and starving, drowsy mothers in the background, it often feels fraudulent — as the writer is so far away from a reality seen only on YouTube. I wrote a piece last month, expressing frustration at how the UN had said […]

WASHINGTON — Green Berets working with government forces in Niger killed 11 Islamic State militants in a firefight in December, the American military acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday. The battle occurred two months after four United States soldiers died in an ambush in another part of Niger — and after senior commanders had […]