Pope Francis appealed for peace in eastern Ukraine, where growing violations of a ceasefire trigger rising tensions between Kyiv and Moscow agreed between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists. It comes while a massive Russian military buildup is underway near Ukraine’s borders and British warships preparing to sail for the Black Sea next month in support of Ukraine.
Russia expelled 20 Czech diplomats after the Czech Republic ordered 18 Russian diplomats to leave on Saturday.
Raul Castro said Friday he is stepping down as head of Cuba’s Communist Party, ending an era of formal leadership that began with his brother Fidel and country’s 1959 revolution.
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook southwestern Iran along the Persian Gulf on Sunday, followed by at least three moderate-strength aftershocks, state TV reported.
Syria is to hold a presidential election on May 26, the parliament speaker announced Sunday, the country’s second in the shadow of civil war, seen as likely to keep President Bashar Assad in power.
Super Typhoon Surigae surged in intensity from a Category 1 storm on Friday to a beastly Category 5 monster on Saturday, with maximum sustained winds estimated at 190 mph with higher gusts.
A grief-stricken nation said farewell to Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, who spent more than seven decades supporting his wife in a role that both defined and constrained his life.
A court in Hong Kong on Friday sentenced veteran pro-democracy leaders to prison terms of between eight and 18 months as Beijing remodels the city into one resembling any other on the Chinese mainland.
An adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel stole the country’s nuclear archive, in what appears to be the first public admission of the 2018 Mossad operation by an Iranian official.
An unmanned drone dropped explosives on a U.S.-led base near the Erbil airport in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Wednesday night, according to reports.
Iranian scientists have successfully enriched uranium to 60 percent purity, its highest ever levels, senior Iranian officials declared on Friday.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla predicted Thursday that people who have received the company’s COVID vaccine will “likely” need a third booster shot within a year to maintain protection against the virus.
U.S. intelligence agencies disagree with the findings of a recent joint World Health Organization-Chinese government probe that dismissed the theory that the COVID-19 virus outbreak could have resulted from an accidental escape from a Chinese laboratory, officials told Congress on Thursday.
Russia will block foreign warships and non-commercial vessels from transiting the Kerch Strait to access the Black Sea, according to reports from Ukrainian media. The strait lies between Crimea and Russia, and connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov.
Deployment of China‘s new DF-26 intermediate-range missile, dubbed the “Guam killer” by Beijing, has rapidly expanded over the past year, according to a Pentagon intelligence report.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoke on Wednesday to discuss “recent Israeli activities in the region,” and Israel’s normalization of relations with a number of Arab states last year, the Times of Israel said. According to Iranian media, Rouhani and Erdogan talked about regional and economic cooperation between their countries.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday expelled 10 Russian diplomats in retaliation to Moscow’s interference in last year’s presidential election and the hacking of federal agencies.
Political tensions are rising in Hungary over government plans to build the European Union’s first Chinese university campus in Budapest, the capital, despite security and social concerns.
The United States will soon announce new sanctions against Russian individuals and entities for alleged election interference and malicious cyber activity, Voice of America reports. It is expected that thirty organizations will be blacklisted and that some 10 Russian officials in the US will be issued with orders to leave the country.
China sent 25 military planes into Taiwanese airspace on Monday, escalating tensions between the United States and Beijing.