Angela Merkel has exposed herself to criticism from her own party after she took a crucial step towards ending a four-month period of political uncertainty by reaching a coalition agreement at the cost of giving the centre-left Social Democrats a greater role in government. Following a marathon of all-night dealmaking sessions and several missed deadlines, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union on Wednesday ...

U.S. President Donald Trump has asked the Pentagon to plan a grand parade of the U.S. armed forces in Washington this year to celebrate military strength, officials said Tuesday. The Washington Post, which was first to report the plan, said Trump wants an elaborate parade this year with soldiers marching and tanks rolling, but no date has been selected. White ...

When the people of Balta wanted to protest, they had to leave town. “This place is so small that blocking the road is like sitting in your own hall – no one notices,” said Wathik Balti, a 19-year-old student. So in December, they headed to the nearest motorway, where dozens of them blocked an important junction for hours and called ...

Turkish and Iraqi mountains need to be cleared of terrorists, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday. Speaking at a joint news conference with his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari in capital Baghdad, Çavuşoğlu said it was important that Iraq clears Daesh terrorist group. “But it is equally important to wipe out all terrorist groups from Iraq,” he said. “Daesh, ...

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has accused the US of forming a “terror army”, after Washington announced plans for a 30,000-strong force inside Syria to protect territory held by its mainly Kurdish allies. On Sunday, the US-led coalition said it was working with its Syrian militia allies, the mainly Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to set up the new border force. The ...

Getty Images Pope Francis attends Midday Prayer of the Divine with more than 300 U.S. Bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on September 23, 2015 in Washington, DC. Pope Francis said on Monday he was really afraid about the danger of nuclear war and that the world now stood at “the very limit.” His comment, made as he ...

The Japanese development of an aircraft carrier – fit to carry US-made F-35 fighter jets – has shocked its Asian neighbours. Earlier this week, Japan revealed its plan to convert a helicopter warship into a stealth fighter aircraft carrier for the first time since the devastation of the Second World War. China has been alarmed by the escalation in Japan’s militarization and warned ...

Earlier this month, senior U.S. and Israeli officials met at the White House to develop a plan for countering Iranian activity in the Middle East. On Thursday, Axios got a copy of the blueprint they arrived at. The document is mostly a snoozer — it will surprise no one that America and Israel would like to undermine Iran’s ballistic-missile program and limit ...

The United Nations monitor on poverty and human rights has issued a devastating report on the condition of America, accusing Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress of attempting to turn the country into the “world champion of extreme inequality”. Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has completed a two-week official tour of the US by releasing ...

PARIS (Reuters) – France reacted cautiously on Friday to U.S. evidence which allegedly proved Iran supplied weapons to Houthi militia in Yemen, saying it was still studying information at its disposal and the United Nations had yet to draw any conclusions. The United States on Thursday presented for the first time pieces of what it said were Iranian weapons supplied ...