DEUTSCHLAND: Germany has recruited 8,500 people to teach child refugees German, as the country expects the number of new arrivals to soar past the million mark in 2015, Die Welt daily reported on Sunday. About 196,000 children fleeing war and poverty will enter the German school system this year, and 8,264 “special classes” have been created to help them catch ...

In early December, the first shipment of uranium from Cameco, based in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, arrived in India. Part of a $350 million, five-year contract signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Canada in April, it came with strong symbolic resonance of a relationship that has new energy and could gather more momentum in 2016 with a ...

VATICAN CITY:  Pope Francis led the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics into Christmas on Thursday, urging those “intoxicated” by possessions and superficial appearances to return to the essential values of life.Celebrating a Christmas eve Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, Francis, whose nearly three-year-old papacy has been marked by calls for sobriety and compassion for the less fortunate, said Christmas was ...

PARIS – As part of a constitutional reform, French government would submit a law aimed at revoking citizenship of all dual nationals, including those who were born in France and convicted on terrorism charges, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced on Wednesday. “The government decided to submit to parliament the extension of revoking nationality of all bi-nationals,” Valls said after ...

LONDON –British Prime Minister David Cameron told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper he wanted to see female British soldiers training to fight on the front line in 2016. Cameron has asked the Ministry of Defence to be ready to post women in ground close-combat roles by the end of next year, after Washington announced this month its military will open all ...

The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire and political settlement in Syria. The resolution envisions the formation of a unity government and calls for an immediate halt to any attacks on civilian targets. Earlier, agencies leaked the draft of the document agreed by the UNSC permanent members right ahead of the session. The four-page ...

FRANCE ELECTION: Front National fails to win a single region in second round of voting – but Marine Le Pen insists she’s still on course for presidency. Moderate French voters delivered a shock election blow to Marine Le Pen’s Front National last night, but as John Lichfield reports from Paris, the far-right leader is still defiantly talking about the presidency ...

Saudi Arabia holds its first ever election open to female voters and candidates on Saturday, in a tentative step towards easing restrictions that are among the world’s tightest on women. The absolute Islamic monarchy, where women are banned from driving and must cover themselves from head-to-toe in public, is the last country where only men had been allowed to vote. ...

There are expectations that the Fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference (Istanbul Process) in Islamabad will pave the way for the peace process between Afghan government and Taliban. The Conference will start today and the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are expected to jointly inaugurate it. However, the conference was preceded by the Senior Officials ...

Venezuela’s opposition won control of the National Assembly by a landslide on Sunday, delivering a major setback to the ruling party and altering the balance of power after 17 years of socialist rule. The opposition won at least 99 seats in the 167-seat legislature, National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena announced after midnight. The socialist party won 46 seats and ...