World News

The European Union on May 4 unveiled a proposal to ban Russian oil imports by the end of the year as Russian forces intensified their assault in on a steel plant in the southeastern port city of Mariupol that Ukrainian forces continue to defend.

The largest Chinese aircraft carrier group reportedly ever assembled is conducting combat training near a U.S. naval base in Japan, according to multiple Chinese media sources on Tuesday.

Pope Francis said Tuesday he wants to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to help end Europe’s worst conflict since World War Two. “I am not going to [Ukraine’s capital] Kyiv for now. I feel that I must not go,” the leader of the Catholic Church told Italy’s daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Russia may be looking to conclude its war in Ukraine within four months’ time, according to Kyiv’s Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense, which said Tuesday it believes September is Moscow’s intended deadline.

Western intelligence officials say North Korea is preparing to conduct a nuclear weapons test for the first time in over four years. Renewed tensions on the peninsula prompted China’s atomic envoy to meet his South Korean counterpart in Seoul on Tuesday calling the situation “severe.”

Russia’s military resumed attacking a steel plant in Ukraine’s bombed-out city of Mariupol with terrified civilians and soldiers trapped inside after some escaped.

Western officials have largely lost hope the Iran nuclear deal can be resurrected, sources familiar with the matter said, forcing them to weigh how to limit Iran’s atomic program even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has divided the big powers.

European Union ministers have met in Brussels to discuss a response to Russia cutting gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria and plans for a possible oil embargo to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 100 people trapped in a steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol were evacuated as deadly clashes raged in the east. He spoke after meeting with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who pledged humanitarian and security assistance amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly nominated a hardline security official to replace him while he has cancer surgery.

The United States has held high-level talks with the UK over how they can co-operate more closely to reduce the chances of war with China over Taiwan and to explore conflict contingency plans for the first time, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

The European Union is leaning toward a ban on imports of Russian oil by the end of the year, two EU diplomats said, after talks between the European Commission and EU member states this weekend.

Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists blew up a section of a natural gas pipeline in Egypt’s northern Sinai on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

The sudden elevation in intensity of top-level talks between Finland and Sweden has raised the bar on the expectation that the two unaligned Nordic states will jointly announce their decisions to join NATO by May 16.

A tense calm returned to the streets of Hungary’s capital late Saturday after rival protests were held about the ongoing Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces desperately tried to halt a massive Russian attack on Ukraine’s east Saturday, fighting village by village to stop the advance.

A prominent Ukrainian journalist of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) network has been killed in a Russian missile strike on her apartment building in the capital, Kyiv, her employer announced.

French President Emmanuel Macron faces a backlash after he authorized the creation of a digital identity document for France following his re-election last Sunday.

Tens of thousands of troops from NATO and its European allies are gearing up for a series of military exercises that the United Kingdom is calling one of the “largest shared deployments since the Cold War.”

As the Russian invasion continued Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve $33 billion more in emergency aid for Ukraine.