There are 17997 articles

  • Australian troops pull out of Iraq

    About 500 Australian combat troops have pulled out of southern Iraq, six months after Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, came to power promising to bring the soldiers home. A spokesman for the governor of Dhi Qar province said the troops had pulled out of the Talil base in Nasiriya on Sunday, with US forces replacing them. But.. More

  • UN-backed Somalia peace talks open

    UN-backed talks have opened in Djibouti in a bid to end the civil conflict that has raged in Somalia for nearly two decades. The talks on Sunday, which had been planned to open a day earlier before being delayed, are aimed at bringing Somali government officials and exiled opposition leaders into direct dialogue in a push for peace. Ahmed Ould Abdallah,.. More

  • Macedonia votes in snap general election

    Voters in Macedonia go to the polls Sunday to elect a government in early elections overshadowed by violence and the impoverished Balkan state's stalled integration into the EU and NATO. Outgoing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski called the polls hoping to secure an absolute majority for his centre-right VMRO-DPMNE after a crisis in his fragile ruling.. More

  • Suicide bomber kills at least 10 west of Baghdad

    A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police checkpoint west of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 10 people including the local police chief, an official said. Fearing more attacks, authorities imposed a vehicle ban and closed all entrances to the targeted town of Hit. The attacker detonated his explosives belt after approaching the checkpoint,.. More

  • Myanmar junta under new pressure over cyclone victims

    Myanmar's junta Saturday came under renewed international pressure from rights groups and the US defence chief who said its slow response to the cyclone disaster had cost "tens of thousands of lives." US Defence Secretary Robert Gates criticised the military regime's delay in allowing in foreign aid, saying US ships and aircraft could have swiftly.. More

  • China evacuates 197,000 as quake rivers swell

    China has evacuated over 197,000 people from an area that risks flooding by landslide- blocked rivers near the epicentre of this month's earthquake in Sichuan province, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. Shouting "evacuate! evacuate!", police with loudspeakers fanned through Youxian on the outskirts of Mianyang city, south of the epicentre of the.. More

  • Somalia's rivals launch peace talks

    Somali government officials and exiled opposition leaders are holding talks in an attempt to find a way to resolve one of Africa's most entrenched conflicts.The talks in neighbouring Djibouti on Saturday will include seven members of the transitional government of Nur Hassan Hussein, the Somali prime minister, and seven opposition leaders. A.. More

  • North Korea 'tests sea missiles'

    North Korea has fired three short-range ship-to-ship missiles off its west coast as part of a military training exercise, reports from South Korea say. A government source was quoted as saying missiles with a range of nearly 50km (30 miles) were fired into the sea west of the North's capital, Pyongyang. The North conducted a similar launch in.. More

  • Doha red carpet awaits Sami al-Hajj

    Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman released from Guantanamo Bay earlier this month, is set to return to Qatar. Al-Hajj will be accorded a public reception by the news network on arriving in Doha on Saturday. He spent six years in the US detention centre without being formally charged. Waddah Khanfar, the director general of Al Jazeera,.. More

  • 1.3 million poised to flee as China drains 'quake lake'

    China was poised Saturday to dynamite a dangerous "quake lake" to drain its waters as 1.3 million people nearby were kept on alert for possible evacuation. Workers set explosives on a dam formed by this month's catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province, after thousands of soldiers finished an enormous drainage channel after 10 days of frantic digging. Wat.. More

  • Europe fuel protests spread wider

    Fuel protests triggered by rising oil prices have spread to more countries across Europe, with thousands of fishermen on strike. Union leaders said Portugal's entire coastal fleet stayed in port on Friday, while in Spain, 7,000 fishermen held protests at the agriculture ministry. French fishermen have been protesting for weeks, with Belgian.. More

  • Crisis forces Thai minister to quit

    A senior minister has resigned from Thailand's government under pressure from the military amid a growing political crisis that has fuelled rumours of a possible coup. Jakrapob Penkair, a minister attached to the prime minister's office, was accused of making comments insulting to Thailand's much-revered king. He announced his resignation just hours.. More

  • China rushes to clear radioactive materials below quake lake

    China rushed Friday to remove radioactive and chemical materials sitting downstream from a "quake lake" that threatens to burst and send torrents of water into heavily populated areas. Nearly 100 unidentified radioactive sources were ordered to be removed by Friday evening from the path of the potential torrent of water, state press reported, citing.. More

  • Myanmar lashes foreign aid, says survivors can eat frogs

    Myanmar's ruling junta lashed out at foreign aid donors Friday, saying cyclone victims did not need supplies of "chocolate bars" and could instead survive by eating frogs and fish. The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a government mouthpiece, also warned that foreign relief workers could snoop inside homes, and condemned donors for linking aid money.. More

  • Arab states ignore Iraq debt appeal

    At the end of a special United Nations conference in Sweden to discuss Iraqi debts, Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, has said that he has received no firm commitments from Arab states to help ease his country's debt burden. Baghdad owes at least $67bn to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Al-Maliki, who pointed out.. More