Eurasia

Tunisian police killed an Islamist militant during clashes near the Algerian border, the interior ministry said on Wednesday, after the government raised the security alert level before elections next month.

Egypt has moved to close down one of the last bastions of Muslim Brotherhood dissent with sweeping new rules to curtail violent protest at Al Azhar University, among the world’s most venerable centres of Islamic learning. Egypt has banned the Muslim Brotherhood and jailed thousands of its supporters since July …

Jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) using heavy weapons have seized a string of villages around Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, as they close in on Syria’s third largest Kurdish town, a monitor said Sept. 18. “ISIL fighters have seized at least 21 villages …

China has called for a negotiated resolution of the border issue with India, shifting the focus on the root cause of problem, following the latest incidents in Chumar and Demchok, along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said during his regular briefing on Thursday …

Russia has threatened to send more troops to its newly-annexed territory of Crimea, after NATO began exercises in western Ukraine. Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the escalation of tensions in Ukraine and the presence of foreign military near Russia’s borders made the deployment of troops a top priority in …

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen Tuesday said NATO does not recognise the reported elections held on 14 September in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met here Tuesday with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, to discuss a variety of issues topped by the need to combat Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) radicals, a necessity agreed by 24 countries at the Iraq conference held in Paris on Monday, …

US warplanes carried out their first air strike on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)near Baghdad, as world diplomats pledged Monday to support Iraq in its fight against the militants. The United States early last month began air strikes against ISIL positions in northern Iraq, but Monday’s …

Turkey could establish a buffer zone to defend its borders with Iraq and Syria from Islamic State (IS) militants, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. After a trip to Qatar Erdogan told journalists the Turkish army is now developing the plan which will have to be inspected by the government, according to the Daily Sabah.

Lawmakers in Ukraine have passed a bill introduced by President Petro Poroshenko envisaging limited self-determination for the country’s east. Ukraine’s government is now calling for local elections (both municipal and general) to be held on December 7 in self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics”.