World News

Russia is reportedly stepping up its involvement in the Libyan civil war, which has in recent years has become a heated proxy conflict drawing in numerous foreign players, driven by a range of motives.

A knife-wielding man fatally stabbed a school deputy head and injured at least five in northern Slovakia before being killed by police, officials say.

British and French officials say migrants fleeing war, persecution, and poverty are using increasingly desperate measures to reach Britain. In the latest case, four migrants tried to cross the English Channel on a makeshift raft made from two windsurfing boards tied together. They were reportedly using shovels as paddles.

Turkey has announced it will buy a second batch of the S-400 air defense missiles system made by Russia, UPI reported Wednesday. In an interview on Turkish TV this week, head of Turkey’s Defense Industries Administration Ismail Demir said the basic purchase agreement for a second batch was in place, while technical transportation issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were being resolved.

A region of northeastern Syria that U.S. forces ceded to Turkey has seen a spike in Islamic State-backed attacks, researchers said Wednesday during a roundtable discussion on religious liberty.

U.S. fighter jets intercepted Russian bombers twice on Wednesday off the coast of Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said Wednesday. The intercepts come less than two weeks after U.S. bombers were met by Russian jets over the Black Sea.

Russia and China have started making the case at the United Nations against Washington’s claim that it can trigger a return of all sanctions on Iran at the Security Council, with Moscow invoking a 50-year-old international legal opinion to argue against the move.

A top expert at the World Health Organization (WHO) has walked away from her comments on the spread of the coronavirus amid concerns they could undermine government-imposed social distancing rules and other measures to halt the virus.

North Korea said Tuesday it would cut off all communications with South Korea amid rising tensions between the two neighbors.

The US and Russia have invited China to attend nuclear arms control talks this month, the Washington Times reports. The 2021 deadline for renewal of the US-Russia New START nuclear arms limitation treaty is fast approaching, and Russia is willing to extend for another five years. However, the US reportedly wants China to come to the negotiating table and join a trilateral treaty.

The coronavirus pandemic inflicted a “swift and massive shock” that has caused the broadest collapse of the global economy since 1870 despite unprecedented government support, the World Bank said Monday.

People with asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 are not the driving force behind the spread of the coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization.

With much of the world in lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic, Iran rushed to increase its stockpiles of enriched uranium and has come closer than ever to develop a nuclear weapon, findings by the United Nations watchdog showed.

Protests, sometimes marred by violence, continue in Europe and elsewhere against perceived racist police brutality following the recent death of the unarmed black man George Floyd in U.S. police custody. The London police chief on Sunday condemned assaults the previous day against police in which at least fourteen police were reportedly injured.

The United States military confirmed Saturday that one of the terror group al-Qaida’s longest-serving commanders in Africa had been killed in Mali during an operation led by France.

Senior legislators from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative block condemned Saturday the reported decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw a quarter of the American troops stationed in Germany.

German prosecutors say British girl Madeleine McCann, whose disappearance in 2007 made world headlines, is “assumed” to be dead.

Another round of trade discussions between the European Union and the U.K. ended Friday – and once again there were no signs of progress ahead of a looming deadline on whether a transition arrangement can be extended.

Forces allied with the U.N.-supported government in Libya’s capital said Friday they have retaken another key western town from rivals behind a year-long offensive on Tripoli. The development is yet another illustration of how Turkey’s support for the Tripoli government has turned the tide of war in the oil-rich country.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong have defied a ban to stage a mass vigil for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.