World News

U.S. President Donald Trump has said the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will be reduced to “anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000” troops by November this year.

North Korea is pressing on with its nuclear weapons program and several countries believe it has “probably developed miniaturized nuclear devices to fit into the warheads of its ballistic missiles,” according to a confidential U.N. report.

Locust swarms have invaded Russia’s southern regions causing colossal damage to the local agriculture.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, millions of Europeans are crowding beaches and other areas amid a massive heatwave. That has added to deaths at sea, including in the Netherlands.

The European Union’s statistics agency has reported the most significant economic falls within the 27-nation bloc since it began recording the figures 25 years ago. 

The Eurozone suffered its greatest contraction on record, exceeding the U.S. economy’s record plunge.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo supported President Trump’s proposed ban of social media phenomenon TikTok, explaining to Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” just how use of the app exposes Americans to having their personal information sent straight to the Chinese government.

The United States will establish a permanent military presence in Poland as it deploys around 1,000 additional U.S. troops there, Poland‘s Defense Ministry said on Friday.

An energy-efficient microchip under development combines different types of processors into one chip and is expected to revolutionize commercial and defense technology, the advanced semiconductor’s inventor says.

A powerful storm bearing down on the Bahamas was officially declared a hurricane late Thursday night, after it caused power outage and downpours in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, Fox News reports. The US National Hurricane Center declared Isaias a Category 1 hurricane when it reached maximum sustained winds of 80 mph.

At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is eyeing another three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Council, a pledge in the Democratic Party’s draft 2020 platform for the U.S. to return to a body plagued by the presence of rights-abusing regimes is drawing some criticism.

Iran’s supreme leader, in a tweet Wednesday that was not flagged, restricted, or blocked by Twitter, called the United States “Satan” and labeled Israel America’s “chained dog,” drawing fresh attention to questions about the platform’s content policies.

Last week, the head of the U.S.’s newest military branch, the Space Force, cautioned publicly for the first time that Moscow had undertaken at least two concerning anti-satellite weapon tests in recent months, in a potential bid to develop on-orbit efficiency that could dangerously hinder the U.S.’s heavy dependency on space-based systems.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched underground ballistic missiles for the first time, as part of an exercise involving a mock-up aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, state television reported Wednesday.

Looking to strengthen its space cooperation with China amid heightened geopolitical tensions with the United States, Russia is in talks with Beijing about the possibility of building a joint lunar research base.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has urged the European Union to help end an alleged government crackdown on independent media in Hungary.

Saudi Arabia has presented a resolution to implement the stalled Riyadh agreement, the Saudi state news agency said in a statement, but there was no announcement of a deal to end a standoff between nominal allies under a Saudi-led coalition.

Tech giant Google has announced it is developing a smart tattoo that will turn the human body into a touchpad through embedded sensors. The “SkinMarks” project seeks to create the next generation of wearable technological devices, Google reported Monday. The project is partly funded by Google Faculty Research Awards.

Chinese officials entered and took control of the U.S. Consulate in the city of Chengdu early on Monday, 72 hours after ordering its closure in retaliation for the U.S. decision to shut China’s consulate in Houston. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had called the mission in Houston a “hub of spying and intellectual property theft.”

A new survey has shown that citizens around the world are losing confidence in their governments over their handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Yahoo News reports. Publishing their report on Saturday, Kekst CNC communications consultancy said: “In most countries this month, support for national governments is falling.” The survey came as officials reported over 280,000 daily new cases worldwide on both Thursday and Friday.