The Palestinian Authority: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who has taken part in previous US-led peace talks with Israel but stayed away Trump’s proposal, vowed that “this conspiracy deal will not pass”.

Britain’s departure from the European Union was set in law yesterday as London returned a signed treaty and MEPs prepared to vote to ratify the divorce.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday urged Palestinians who rejected President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan to come up with a “counter-offer” that could win Israeli support, as he headed to Britain on a five-nation tour.

Four Indian airlines have banned a top stand-up comic over a mid-air confrontation with a star political television presenter that has become an internet sensation.

Russia and China are working to develop a coronavirus vaccine and Beijing has handed over the genome of the virus to Moscow, a Russian diplomatic mission in China said yesterday.

A number of airlines say they are halting or reducing flights to China as the country struggles to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

President Donald Trump’s legal team yesterday concluded its three-day presentation as they started it — arguing that the Democrats’ case amounted to partisan politics that would undo the results of the 2016 presidential election and drive Trump from office.

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and eastern Cuba yesterday, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no reports of casualties or heavy damage.

A team of scientists in Australia has said they have successfully developed a lab-grown version of coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside of China, in a breakthrough that could help combat the global spread of the illness.

Hundreds of Americans and Japanese leave the quarantined Chinese city at the centre of a viral epidemic aboard charter flights, as the death toll soared to 132 and confirmed infections neared 6,000.

Australian officials yesterday warned communities in bushfire-ravaged eastern states to strengthen fire defences amid forecasts of soaring temperatures and strong winds, as one approaching blaze cloaked the capital in thick smoke.

The deadly new coronavirus that has broken out in China, 2019-nCoV, will afflict a minimum of tens of thousands of people and will last at least several months, researchers estimate based on the first available data.

Two Iraqis were killed and dozens wounded in protest-related violence yesterday, as authorities suspended a television station which has broadcast intensive coverage of the months-long movement demanding regime change.

A motion for Iran to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was introduced in parliament yesterday, the assembly’s news site ICANA reported, in a move that appears to raise the stakes in Tehran’s confrontation with the West.

Israeli citizens are not allowed to come to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s foreign minister announced Monday after the Jewish state said it gave its citizens the green light to visit.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers launched their final day of arguments in his US impeachment trial as the Senate’s top Democrat yesterday rejected a Republican proposal to let senators review former national security adviser John Bolton’s explosive, unpublished book manuscript on a classified basis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been formally indicted in court on corruption charges after he withdrew his request for parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

Belgium’s former king Albert II admitted Monday he is the father of a daughter born from an affair half a century ago after a DNA test he was forced to take came back positive.

American warplanes dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in 2019 than at any other time in at least a decade, according to the US Air Force, as Washington intensified attacks in the country amid withdrawal talks with the Taliban.

President Xi Jinping yesterday said China was sure of defeating a “devil” coronavirus that has killed 106 people, spread across the world and rattled financial markets.