Top U.N. officials warned Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated discrimination and other human rights violations that can fuel conflict, and its indirect consequences are dwarfing the impact of the virus itself in the world’s most fragile countries.
A massive fire erupted at the Beirut port on Thursday, just weeks after a massive blast at the same site devastated the Lebanese capital.
Microsoft said Thursday it’s detected an increase in cyberattacks related to the November presidential election coming from China, Iran and Russia.
Top European Union and British officials were holding an emergency meeting in London on Thursday over Britain’s plan to break part of the Brexit divorce agreement, a move the EU says would demolish any goodwill to reach a trade agreement.
China, Russia, Iran and a handful of other nations will hold massive joint military drills later this month in what Beijing dubs a “comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation in a new era.”
A National Defense University expert on China told a congressional hearing Wednesday that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is increasing its level of military coercion in Asia as part of a strategy to extend China’s power and influence across the region, the Washington Times reports.
President Trump checked off a key campaign promise Wednesday with a major drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq and an even greater reduction in Afghanistan coming soon, but skeptics say the moves reflect U.S. political imperatives and not the chaos and violence both countries are likely to face down the road.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday spoke with Oman’s leader, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said, about ways to enhance regional security and strengthen economic ties between the two countries, the White House said in a statement.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are working toward forming a “strong foundation” for future, high level “cooperation,” the leaders’ respective national media have reported. The Turkish and Iranian media reports followed a video conference the two leaders held on Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post said.
The U.S. military is reducing troops in Afghanistan from 8,600 to about 4,500 by early November, the head of U.S Central Command said Wednesday, hours after he announced the withdrawal of more service members from Iraq this month.
Iran said Tuesday it is building a sophisticated new building near its underground Natanz nuclear site, state TV reported.
The authorities in Sudan are trying to protect the country’s ancient pyramids from flooding as heavy rains have caused the nearby River Nile to reach record-breaking levels.
President Trump will announce a further drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday, and a withdrawal of more troops from Afghanistan in the coming days, a senior administration official said Tuesday night.
An opposition leader says an increasing number of critical activists opposing Belarusian President Alexander Lukanhesko are detained, kidnapped, and sometimes expelled from the country. The statement by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya comes amid dramatic scenes at the borders of the former Soviet republic.
A tense calm returned to Budapest on Monday after thousands of Hungarians protested against what they view as a nationalist government takeover of public education.
Hungary says it will unveil a statue of late U.S. President George W. Bush in Budapest to mark the 30th anniversary of the collapse of communist dictatorship in Central and Eastern Europe. In 1989, Bush became the first U.S. president to visit Hungary while in office. He died in 2018 at the age of 94.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday raised the idea of separating the U.S. and Chinese economies, also known as decoupling, suggesting the U.S. would not lose money if the two countries no longer did business.
A Chinese aviation company has apparently been test flying its new stealth fighter jet that aims to match America’s F-35s, and which could be a candidate for its next generation of ship-borne warplanes.
European Union leaders have accused Britain of throwing political grenades across the channel by threatening to undermine its divorce deal with the EU. The so-called Brexit Withdrawal Agreement was signed last year to allow Britain’s orderly exit from the bloc.
The NATO military alliance demands that Russia reveals its Novichok nerve agent program to international monitors, after the poisoning of activist Alexei Navalny.