The number of coronavirus infections in the world have been rising even as countries take precautionary measures to slow the spread down.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will step up government action this week in a bid to slow the spread across Britain of the potentially deadly coronavirus by accelerating plans to make the elderly stay at home — possibly for months — and for whole families to self-quarantine when any family member displays COVID-19 symptoms.

A lingering dispute over Afghanistan’s presidential election and an outbreak of coronavirus in the country appear to have complicated further an already troubled effort the United States is making to help find a negotiated end to nearly 19 years of war.

The blueprint reportedly stipulates the development of the Hypersonic Cruise Missile (HCM) and the Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile (HVGP) which are expected to enter service in the early 2030s.

Israel plans to deploy electronic counterterrorism measures to track the movements of people who might be infected with the coronavirus, officials said, a confluence of crime fighting and public health that could become more common even as it sparked civil liberty concerns.

A Turkish court ordered the imprisonment of four relatives of slain ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for joining the terrorist group.

There is “credible” evidence British airstrikes against the Islamic State group have killed civilians in Iraq and Syria, the US military has said.

Prosecutors in the Austrian state of Carinthia have started a trial against an alleged Hezbollah commander who spent 13 years in the central European country while reportedly being involved in financing terrorism.

A likely Iranian-backed militant group called “League of the Revolutionaries” published a video Sunday claiming responsibility for recent attacks against a base housing American-led coalition troops in Iraq.

Pro-Kremlin media outlets are actively spreading disinformation about coronavirus in an attempt to “undermine public trust” in Western countries, according to an internal European Union document.

A glance at a global map tracking the spread of the coronavirus just one week ago would have shown a large blank space south of Russia, north of Iran, and west of China as an area completely free of the virus.

With hundreds of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Balkans, a few people have taken on the burden of keeping the public calm and well-informed. BIRN takes a look at some of them.

In cosying up to Washington and criticising Brussels, Kosovo’s president is trying to protect his place at the negotiating table with Serbia, analysts say.
Since returning from a week-long trip to Washington in early March, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci has turned his fire on the European Union, seeing the United States as the best address to seek a deal between Kosovo and Serbia.

Major Chinese home-grown aircraft, including the C919 large passenger jet, AG600 large amphibious aircraft and Y-20 large transport aircraft, have managed to conduct test flights and operations despite the novel coronavirus epidemic.

On the night of 27-28 February, Turkey lifted the strict controls it has enforced at its sea and land borders with Greece since March 2016, prompting thousands of migrants to head for the frontier in order to attempt passage into Europe. Ankara’s decision came just an hour after news broke that at least 34 Turkish soldiers had been killed in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel-held bastion. It was the highest death toll the Turkish military had suffered in a single attack in the last two decades, and it exacerbated fears that intensified combat in Idlib would push nearly one million more Syrians into Turkey to join the four million refugees the country has been generously hosting.

International forces are struggling to contain a brutal Islamist insurgency, with the death toll rising alarmingly.

The Trump administration shook hands with the Taliban on Saturday to end a near two decades-long war in Afghanistan. But just as one front in the battle on terror is closing a new one is opening up.

The U.S. decision to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January inadvertently also caused the death of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the powerful and influential head of Kataib Hezbollah and de facto head of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). While commentators have focused on Soleimani, the death of Muhandis has broad implications for Iraq’s Shiite militia network.

Turkish strikes on northwest Syria late on Friday killed nine members of Iran-backed Hezbollah and wounded 30 others, a commander in the regional alliance backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said.

The commander said on Saturday that the Turkish strikes targeted Hezbollah headquarters near the city of Saraqeb in Idlib, a flashpoint of fighting in recent days, using smart missiles and drones.

Berlin has increased security measures at mosques across the country to shore up the safety of its Muslim residents in the wake of far-right terrorism that recently rocked the country with a number of deadly attacks.

GCHQ and Ministry of Defence to roll out national task force of hackers after months of delay.

The United States on Wednesday blacklisted a senior member of Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia, punishing it for its attacks targeting U.S. forces, most recently for killing an American contractor in an Iraqi military base near the northern city of Kirkuk.

A French court on Tuesday handed a 12-year jail term to a computer technician who travelled to Syria to join ISIS and trained to fight under the ringleader of the 2015 Paris attacks.

Truce implemented after Islamic Jihad armed group and Israeli army traded rocket fire and air raids since Sunday.

Hezbollah is against allowing the International Monetary Fund to manage Lebanon’s financial crisis, the powerful group said on Tuesday, indicating opposition to any IMF bailout that would impose tough conditions on the heavily indebted state.

After nine years of civil war, the fighting over who controls Syria has come down to one province: opposition-held Idlib, in the northwest. Backed by Russian air power, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad began to advance on the area early this year. Because the drive left rebels and civilians caught in the crossfire with little room to flee inside Syria, it raised the specter of enormous bloodshed and a massive refugee exodus toward neighboring Turkey. The showdown put Russia and Turkey in conflict, after the two countries worked for years to contain the havoc of the war. A cease-fire was announced March 5, the latest after many earlier truces have broken down.

In 2008, they told us not to ‘politicise’ the crash. We ended up with a decade of austerity. The coronavirus crisis will reshape the economy in profound ways – now is the time to make socialist arguments about how to respond, argues Grace Blakeley.

Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the US as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus.

Last week’s dramatic fall in the value of global stock markets was prompted, in part, by Moscow’s decision at the end of last week to end its cooperation with the Saudis to agree to new oil production targets, a measure designed to maintain global oil prices at a sustainable level.

UN agencies have underscored their commitment to continue supporting civilians affected by the war in Syria, which this month enters its tenth year. The Secretary-General issued a statement on Thursday, declaring that “we cannot allow the tenth year to result in the same carnage, the same flouting of human rights and international humanitarian law.”

U.S. warplanes soaring through the skies of Iraq hit a series of sites belonging to an Iranian-backed militia, exacting revenge for a deadly attack on American and coalition troops just 24 hours earlier.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) detained three senior members of the kingdom’s royal family yesterday.

Good afternoon, Chairman Keating, Ranking Member Kinzinger, and distinguished members of the Committee. In recent years, international attention has focused on Russia’s efforts to keep its neighboring country, Ukraine, within its sphere of influence. Today, at this important hearing, I will speak about the situation in another country affected by Russian policies and military actions – Georgia.

Turkey and Russia have agreed to begin joint patrols along a key highway in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib as part of a recent ceasefire agreement between the two sides, Turkey’s defense minister says.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry has summoned the US and British ambassadors to Baghdad over a string of airstrikes carried out by the United States against multiple locations of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.

Tensions between the U.S. and China may re-escalate after officials of both countries hurled verbal attacks at each other about the origin of the coronavirus, observers say.