united nations
Hamas dissolves its government in Gaza to transfer power to a UN-backed committee
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip | The Hamas militant group said Monday it had dissolved its government in Gaza and is preparing to transfer power to a technical committee backed by the United Nations as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal. Hamas did not say whether it planned to take the crucial step of disarming or […]
A Chinese dissident recounts his perilous dinghy escape to South Korea and how he got to Canada
HONG KONG | A roughly 40-hour sea journey on a dinghy with a dying phone. Detention in South Korea. That’s just part of what Chinese dissident Dong Guangping endured to escape his native country. He arrived late last week in Canada, a destination he had eyed for more than a decade. Dong had been locked […]
Israeli troops face resistance from residents as they push into a town in Syria
ABDIN, Syria | As Israeli troops and vehicles entered the town of Abdin in southern Syria, residents blocked the roads with rocks, and some young men and boys threw stones to push back the military patrol. Tensions in this part of the country created by a buffer zone occupied by Israeli forces have flared into […]
Grief and optimism clash in scramble to locate survivors 4 days after Venezuela earthquakes
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela | Local and international rescue teams raced against the clock to pull survivors from the rubble in Venezuela on Sunday, four days after two powerful earthquakes shook the northern state of La Guaira. The government reported 1,450 dead from the quakes Sunday afternoon as it faced growing criticism from Venezuelans that its […]
Israeli strike hits a tent in central Gaza, killing 3, including a child
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip | Israeli forces struck a tent sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least three Palestinians, including an 8-year-old boy and his grandfather, medical officials said. Health authorities in the coastal enclave said the drone strike hit a neighborhood in Deir al-Balah, one of the least […]
US and Iran dispute whether Tehran has agreed to nuclear inspections
ISLAMABAD | The U.S. and Iran were in dispute Tuesday over whether Tehran had agreed to allow U.N. inspections of its nuclear sites. As officials negotiated over how to permanently end the war in Iran, a separate plan emerged to break the shipping bottleneck through the Strait of Hormuz. The disagreement over nuclear inspections came […]
Israel seized more land from neighbors since 2023 than it has in decades
JERUSALEM | Over the past two and a half years, Israel has taken control of swaths of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria that amount to its biggest expansion of militarily occupied lands in decades. It is an area larger than many major cities — roughly 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) — and Israel has said […]
Drone strikes kill over 1,000 civilians in Sudan in the first 5 months of 2026, UN rights chief says
CAIRO | Drone strikes killed more than 1,000 civilians in war-torn Sudan in the first five months of 2026, a senior United Nations official said Monday as the unmanned aerial vehicles turn the conflict deadlier for civilians. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said his office has documented a “sharp increase” in drone […]
El Nino is here and scientists fear it’ll be big, bad and costly with heat, floods, droughts, fires
WASHINGTON | El Nino, Nature’s chaotic climate agent, has formed in a warmed-up Pacific Ocean and is expected to grow to historic strength, meteorologists announced Thursday. Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. […]
Australian judges weigh Indigenous activist’s bid to prosecute King Charles for genocide
MELBOURNE, Australia | Three Australian appeals court judges reserved their decision Wednesday on whether an activist can prosecute Britain’s King Charles III for alleged genocide of Australia’s Indigenous people. Uncle Robbie Thorpe, 68, turned to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Victoria state after two lower courts rejected his bid to launch a private prosecution […]