The banquet hall at Sri Lanka’s ousted prime minister’s official residence is packed with supporters — many sleeping on chairs and the floor — who have come to stand guard as he tussles for power with an old rival. Thousands of loyalists from across the country are camped out at the Temple Trees residence in Colombo, a colonial-era bungalow where Ranil Wickremesinghe has been holed up since his shock dismissal more than a week ago.

Over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country s war will not save all of them, the UN children s agency said. "Today, 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected by severe acute malnutrition," said Geert Cappelaere, regional director of UNICEF.

Russia accused rebels in Syria s Idlib Province on Thursday of trying to wreck a Russian-Turkish initiative to create a demilitarized zone in the insurgent-held region, the Interfax news agency reported. Idlib is held by an array of rebel groups, the most powerful of which is Tahrir al-Sham. An amalgamation of Islamist groups, it is dominated by the former Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate until 2016.

A seasoned Norwegian diplomat who helped oversee talks leading to the Oslo peace accords has been named as the next special envoy to Syria. In a letter seen Tuesday by AFP, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that he wishes to give the job to Geir Pedersen.

The smashed fuselage of a crashed Indonesian jetliner may have been found, the country’s military chief said Wednesday, two days after the deadly accident feared to have killed 189 people. Hadi Tjahjanto said authorities were confident sonar technology had pinpointed the location of the Boeing 737-MAX plane that plunged into the sea on Monday.

U.S. sanctions against Iran will have “severe consequences” for the world order, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday, days before new sanctions on Tehran s oil exports take effect. Washington reintroduced sanctions against Iran s currency trade, metals and auto sectors in August after it pulled out from a multinational 2015 deal that lifted sanctions in return for limits on Iran s nuclear program.

The Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet that crashed in Indonesia on Monday morning flew erratically during a flight the previous evening when it experienced a "technical problem", according to data from flight tracking website FlightRadar24. After taking off from Denpasar on the holiday island of Bali on Sunday evening, the jet reported unusual variations in altitude and airspeed in the first several minutes of flight - including an 875-foot drop over 27 seconds when it would normally be ascending - before stabilising and flying on to Jakarta.

The Lebanese Forces (LF) party said on Monday it will join a new national unity government led by Saad al-Hariri despite an unfair offer of cabinet posts, clearing the way for an agreement on a new cabinet five months after an election. Hariri has been trying to form a government since the May parliamentary election, with rivalry between the LF and President Michel Aoun s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) - both Christian groups - seen as the main obstacle.

North Korea is exploring a grand plan to become a regional transportation hub, inspired in part by the successes of Singapore and Switzerland, and would be open to joining world financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund if current member states give up their “hostile” policies toward it, a senior government economist has told The Associated Press. Ri Ki Song, a senior researcher with the Economic Institute of the North s Academy of Social Sciences, said that although sanctions aimed at getting his country to abandon its nuclear and missile programs have increased over the past year, the country s economy has maintained steady growth — with its GDP increasing from $24.998 billion in 2013 to $29.595 billion in 2016 and $30.704 billion in 2017.

U.S. Defense Secretary said on Sunday that the United States was in consultation with its European allies on an arms control treaty, as NATO members urge Washington to try to bring Russia back into compliance with the pact rather than quit it. President Donald Trump said on Oct. 20 that Washington planned to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and Ronald Reagan had signed in 1987.

President Hassan Rouhani said late Saturday that the divisions between the US and Europe over renewed sanctions on Iran were a "rare historical victory" for the Islamic republic. "If this time last year, we had stated that America would stand against the great nation of Iran... and Europe would stand with Iran and against America, the overwhelming majority of us... would have said that this was pure optimism," Rouhani told lawmakers in a televised address.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was "bringing out the military" to protect the US border as a caravan of Central American migrants continued a slow trek through Mexico toward the United States, but provided no details. Despite raising Trump s ire, thousands of Central American men, women and children seeking to escape violence, poverty and government corruption in their home countries continued their journey toward the distant US border.

Ethiopia s parliament has approved senior diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde as the country s first female president, proceedings on state television showed, cementing another shift in the country s political system from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Sahle-Work is at present U.N. under-secretary general and special representative of the secretary general to the African Union. She replaces Mulatu Teshome Wirtu, who tendered his resignation to parliament earlier on Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in his toughest comments yet, said Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince bore ultimate responsibility for the operation that led to Jamal Khashoggi s killing, piling pressure on his ally amid a global outcry over the journalist s death. The Wall Street Journal published Trump s remarks hours before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman s appearance at a business conference where he is due to make his most high profile comments since Khashoggi was killed on Oct. 2.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Turkey will not allow those responsible for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to avoid justice, from those who ordered it to those who carried it out. "We are determined not to allow a cover-up of this murder and to make sure all those responsible - from those who ordered it to those who carried it out - will not be allowed to avoid justice," Erdogan said at a speech in Ankara. He said some people had been uncomfortable with him sharing evidence regarding the investigation into the killing in his speech on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump said Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was "pretty rough" on Saudi Arabia in remarks on Tuesday about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and said Riyadh s handling of the matter was "the worst cover-up ever." Trump told reporters he wanted to get all the facts on Khashoggi s death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul before agreeing with Erdogan s assessment. Trump, who sent his CIA director to Turkey to discuss the issue, said he expected to have a report pretty soon.

A U.S. federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a lawsuit by a group of former child slaves accusing the U.S. unit of Nestle SA, the world s largest food maker, and Cargill Co [CARG.UL] of perpetuating child slavery at Ivory Coast cocoa farms. Judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California, said in a unanimous decision that the group could proceed with its claims despite the alleged abuses having occurred overseas.

The Italian government expects the European Commission to decide for the first time ever on Tuesday to ask a member state to revise its draft budget, a government source said on Sunday. The Commission has slammed as an unprecedented breach of EU fiscal rules Italy’s 2019 budget plan, which aims to lift the deficit to 2.4 percent of domestic output next year from 1.8 percent in 2018. Since receiving beefed-up powers in 2013 over member states’ budgetary plans, the Commission has never asked a country to submit a revised budget.

Turkey on Monday vowed that nothing will stay secret in the case of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom s consulate in Istanbul, adding Ankara did not want relations with Riyadh to be damaged. "From the start, the line of our President (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) has been clear. Nothing will remain secret in this case," presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters in Ankara.

Nikki Haley abruptly resigned Tuesday as the US ambassador to the United Nations, in the latest departure from President Donald Trump s often shifting national security team. Meeting Haley in the Oval Office, Trump said she had done a “fantastic job” and would stay on to the end of the year.

The case of Khashoggi took place on Saudi sovereign territory and it will be looked at by Saudi courts when all procedures are complete," Saudi Arabia s justice minister said in a statement issued by state news agency SPA on Saturday afternoon. Saudi Arabia had said late Friday night that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a fight inside its Istanbul consulate, its first admission of his death after two weeks of denials that have shaken Western relations with the powerful kingdom.