World News

Moscow on Tuesday rejected a U.S. assessment of massive Russian military casualties in Ukraine but declined to give its own estimates. The United States said Monday that Russia’s military had sustained 100,000 casualties in the past five months, including tens of thousands of dead. Many soldiers are killed and injured in the battle for Bakhmut, Ukraine’s devastated eastern city that has become of symbolic importance for both sides of so far Europe’s bloodiest conflict in the 21st century.

The mother of detained American freelance journalist Austin Tice says assurances about efforts to bring him home from Syria have “lost their strength.”

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Iran are among 19 nations seeking to join the BRICS group, which may outpace the global role of leading Western economies within five years, officials confirmed.

Authorities say dozens of people have been injured in a series of Russian missile strikes at Ukrainian cities ahead of an expected counteroffensive by Ukraine’s military. The most devastating attacks hit the eastern Ukrainian town of Pavlohrad, wounding 34 people, including five children, officials said. Two women were said to be in intensive care.

Violent demonstrators took to the streets of Paris Monday and across France to protest against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, joining workers across Europe in May Day rallies.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Sunday that Turkish forces have killed Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, the suspected leader of Islamic State in neighboring Syria, the New York Post reports. Turkey currently controls sections of territory in northern Syria since being allowed to carry out land incursions against Kurdish groups it claims are terrorists.

Pope Francis said Sunday that the Vatican is involved in a peace mission for wartorn Ukraine as the bloodiest weekend for civilians in more than a month killed dozens of people.

World leaders gather this year at the United Nations in New York to speed up the global “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” amid frustration over a lack of progress, organizers say.

The U.S. military says it is arming aircraft sent to the Middle East with “bunker-busting” bombs due to “increasing aggression” from the Islamic Republic of Iran, which may soon have nuclear weapons.

Iran has denied delivering over 300,000 artillery shells and about a million rounds of ammunition to Russia for use in Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has increased its submarine presence in the Atlantic at a higher level than ever in recent years, the top U.S. officer overseeing operations in Europe said Wednesday, citing one of several examples contradicting conclusions that the military loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin has been severely degraded by his war in Ukraine.

Iran’s naval forces on Thursday seized an oil tanker bound for Texas in the Gulf of Oman, a move that drew condemnation from the U.S. military at a time of heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a possible treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and reversal of some of the neurological damage caused by dementia, the Jerusalem Post reports. The peer-reviewed MIT study was published Wednesday in the journal PNAS.

The president of war-torn Ukraine said Wednesday he had held a meaningful dialogue with China’s leader after Beijing unveiled a peace plan to end the armed conflict between Kyiv and Moscow. Yet despite the talks between President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, there were no signs of peace returning to the frontline of an armed conflict in which hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed and injured.

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of an “extremely, extremely dangerous” situation developing in Sudan where fighting forces have taken over a national public laboratory storing samples of dangerous, contagious diseases, including polio, cholera, and measles, CBS News reports.

The defense and intelligence envoys of Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey held talks in Moscow on Tuesday as part of efforts to rebuild ties between Ankara and Damascus after years of hostility during the Syrian war.

Just months after a magnitude 5.6 earthquake killed 340 people in West Java, Indonesia was struck by a 7.3 earthquake west of Sumatra Island on Tuesday, causing residents to evacuate to higher ground and triggering a tsunami warning for two hours, Reuters reports.

A Dutch rightwing broadcaster founded by a former war reporter and Nazi hunter has been fined and is threatened with closure over its content and perceived refusal to cooperate with liberal-leaning networks.

Analysts have warned of a global rice shortage as extreme weather conditions have hit major rice-producing countries like China and Pakistan, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to supplies of relatively cheap Ukrainian grain being blocked in Black Sea ports.

Britain, the European Union, and the United States imposed new sanctions on Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), officials, and a mobile telecommunications provider held responsible for human rights violations.