Eurasia

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Thursday welcomed Bulgaria’s involvement in NATO’s new mission to train, advise and assist the Afghan forces during a meeting with Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev in Sofia. NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan last December and replaced it with a non-combat mission of about 12,000 …

The US condemned further violence in eastern Ukraine at a bus stop in Donetsk, Ukraine Thursday morning that claimed at least a dozen innocent lives, noted State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki to reporters. There is an investigation into the incident by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) …

Foreign leaders gathered in a cavernous mosque in the Saudi Arabian capital on Jan. 23 for the funeral of King Abdullah. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the leaders of Sudan and Ethiopia joined Gulf rulers for the funeral prayer at Riyadh’s Imam Turki bin …

France on Friday deplored what it said was the “forced resignation” of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his Prime Minister Khaled Bahaa. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Yemenis should work for the unity of the country and the continuity of its institutions. Paris also called for …

The shelling of a bus and clashes in Ukraine’s separatist east left 34 people dead on Thursday as Kiev was forced to abandon its defence of Donetsk’s airport in one of the deadliest days of the nine-month war. In the worst incident, 13 civilians died when shelling hit a trolleybus …

Yemeni leader Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi offered to resign amid a standoff with a powerful Shiite militia in control of the capital, throwing his country deeper into political turmoil. In his letter of resignation Hadi, a key US ally in the fight against Al-Qaida, said he could no longer stay in office as the country was …

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Wednesday that more than 9,000 Russian troops were backing Ukrainian separatist fighters that Moscow will be under pressure to reel in at high-stakes peace talks in Berlin. Poroshenko´s claims followed days of heavy fighting that has left an already shaky September truce in tatters …

Ukraine’s Defence Ministry says it has withdrawn its troops from the main terminal of Donetsk airport The defence ministry has said that the military has kept control of some areas of the airport where harsh fighting has been underway for the last few weeks. Six soldiers are believed to be …

NATO’s military leaders will re-establish contact with their Russian counterparts amid fighting in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels, according to NATO’s top military commander. NATO’s top military commander General Philip Breedlove told a news conference at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Thursday: “We have talked an awful lot about …

Algeria has welcomed Thursday, through its Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Abdelaziz Benali Cherif, the signing of the reconciliation agreement between the parties to the conflict in South Sudan, and hoped that this agreement would help reach a final solution to their dispute. “We welcome the signing, on Wednesday 21 January, of …