BERLIN/PARIS: Emboldened by a preliminary coalition deal between Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Social Democrats (SPD), Germany and France will try to inject new momentum into their stalled EU reform efforts this week when their finance ministers meet in Paris. Peter Altmaier, one of Merkel’s closest party allies, will pay ...

BEIRUT: Lebanon will host the 2019 Arab League Summit, Prime Minister Saad Hariri told Cabinet officials Thursday. Hariri left Lebanon for Paris following the Cabinet session, an airport source told The Daily Star. Sources close to Hariri said that his visit to Paris was “a personal trip.” In the spirit ...

President will not now open new US embassy next month, with secretary of state Rex Tillerson likely to take his place Donald Trump has cancelled a visit to Britain next month to open the new US embassy in London amid fears of mass protests. The American president claimed on Twitter ...

Snowfall covered the desert dunes   Snow has fallen in the Sahara, covering desert dunes in a layer up to 40cm deep. Snow started falling on the Algerian town of Ain Sefra in the early hours of Sunday morning, giving children an opportunity to race each other down the slopes. Rising ...

        Iran’s top nuclear official said Monday that his country might rethink its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency if President Trump scrapped American participation in the 2015 agreement limiting Iranian nuclear activities. The warning, from Ali Akbar Salehi, president of the Atomic Energy Organization of ...

  BEIJING: An Iranian oil tanker that caught fire after colliding with a freighter off China’s east coast is at risk of exploding and sinking, Chinese state media reported Monday as authorities from three countries struggled to find its 32 missing crew members and contain oil spewing from the blazing ...

Genetic analysis of a baby girl who died at the end of the last ice age shows she belonged to a previously unknown ancient group of Native Americans   A baby girl who lived and died in what is now Alaska at the end of the last ice age belonged ...

  A little over four years ago, I drove to the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh to spend a day with a 12-year-old girl. Her name was Ahed Tamimi, and I was interviewing her for a magazine article, Children of the Occupation: Growing up in Palestine. We talked about ...

  US President Donald Trump, whose controversial decision last month to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital prompted global condemnation and widespread protests, has threatened to cut off aid to Palestinians. Trump said in a pair of Twitter posts on Tuesday that “we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ...

ISLAMABAD: China hosted the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, in a bid to improve the neighbors’ historically fractious relationship. Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China, Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani of Afghanistan and Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif led delegations from their respective countries. According to a joint ...