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Iranians at an anti-Israeli rally after Friday prayers in Tehran. An Israeli airstrike on Iran on Friday damaged an air defense system, according to Western and Iranian officials, in an attack calculated to deliver a message that Israel could bypass Iran's defensive systems undetected and paralyze them.
WORLD
Apr 21, 2024

Israel’s strike on Iran highlights its ability to evade Tehran’s air defenses

The strike Friday was the latest salvo between the two countries this month that have heightened fears of a broader regional conflict.
A submerged street after heavy rains in Qingyuan, in China's southern Guangdong province, on Sunday
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
Apr 22, 2024

Unseasonal floods batter 'factory floor of the world' in China

As home to factories crucial to the world, China's Guangdong province has prepared for floods — but not on this scale.
Smoke rises following Israeli strikes in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 23, 2024

As Iran tensions ease, Israel turns sights back on Hamas and Rafah

The Israeli prime minister has pledged to "increase the military and diplomatic pressure” on Hamas, aiming to free hostages and declare victory.
People backing Ukraine gather outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Tuesday. The Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to approve a long-stalled $95 billion package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Apr 24, 2024

Congress passes Ukraine aid bill in boost to Kyiv — and Taipei — after long delay

The package, which had been delayed amid objections from Republican hard-liners, could be signed into law as soon as this week.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government has so far shown restraint in responding to a drumbeat of U.S. trade curbs, but driving TikTok out of the U.S. could challenge that calibration.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 25, 2024

TikTok ultimatum puts U.S. firms in firing line for China response

Legislation approved on Wednesday would give parent company ByteDance nearly a year to divest the video-sharing platform before facing an outright ban.
Recent cases of alleged Chinese espionage in Germany and Britain are the latest reminder of Beijing's immense intelligence network and its ability to penetrate into the heart of European capitals.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 25, 2024

Europe ill-prepared to counter China's espionage push, analysts say

This week's cases of alleged Chinese spying in Germany and Britain are the latest reminder of Beijing's immense intelligence network.
Everywhere, U.S. allies are taking steps to defend or advance their interests in the event former U.S. President Donald Trump returns to power in November elections, an even chance based on recent opinion polls in swing states.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 25, 2024

How U.S. allies are preparing for a possible second Trump term

They want to avoid Trump's "America First" policies dealt them before, which included trade wars and a shakeup of security alliances.
The Oresundsverket natural gas-fired power plant, operated by Uniper, in Malmo, Sweden
WORLD / Politics
Apr 26, 2024

Sweden plans for worst-case scenario: War spreading in Europe

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted Sweden to prepare for any possible contingency, including war coming to Europe.
Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery toward Russian positions. Ukraine's allies are looking into ways to use frozen Russian assets to aid the war-torn country, but the process remains highly complex.
WORLD / Politics / EXPLAINER
Apr 26, 2024

How the West might use Russia's frozen reserves to help Ukraine

Ideas being looked at remain highly complex given it would set a controversial precedent.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Friday
WORLD / Politics
Apr 26, 2024

Top U.S. and China diplomats talk tough amid warnings of new ‘downward spiral’

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did not mince words when addressing a raft of contentious topics, including trade, Ukraine and Taiwan.
A young patient is evacuated from a hospital in Kyiv after reports that the building may have been targeted by Russian forces on Friday. Russia attacked railway facilities in three different regions across Ukraine on Thursday night and Friday morning, as the Russian defense minister vowed to step up strikes aimed at slowing the flow of critically needed American weapons and equipment to the front.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 27, 2024

Russia targets Ukraine railways as Western aid due to arrive

Kyiv warned that Moscow was looking to disrupt military supplies ahead of a fresh Russian offensive while Ukraine waits for new U.S. weapons deliveries.
Some programmers are gearing up for what they expect to be an era of tighter controls after Russian President Vladimir Putin secured a mandate until at least 2030 with a landslide win at elections last month.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 27, 2024

Russian programmers play 'cat and mouse' game to outsmart censors

Some of them employing techniques learnt from Chinese hackers' efforts to evade the even more stringent 'Great Firewall' there.
Chelsea defender Alfie Gilchrist celebrates after scoring the club's sixth goal during their English Premier League football match against Everton on April 15.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2024

Arsenal? Liverpool? Chelsea? Help me pick my 'football' team

This writer’s been in England for six years. It’s time he backed a club.
Palestinian children stand in a camp for displaced people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip by the border with Egypt on Sunday.
WORLD
Apr 29, 2024

U.S. pushes for Gaza truce and hostage release as Blinken visits

The White House said that Israel has agreed to hear out its concerns.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a joint ministerial meeting of the GCC-U.S. Strategic Partnership in Riyadh to discuss the humanitarian crises in the Gaza, on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 30, 2024

U.S. warns ICC action on Israel would hurt cease-fire chances

The U.S. and its allies are concerned that the International Criminal Court may issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials just as the country is getting closer to a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, potentially jeopardizing a deal, people familiar with the matter said.
A human tooth discovered at Taforalt Cave in Morocco. Isotopic analysis has uncovered unexpected dietary habits among preagricultural communities in the country.
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 30, 2024

New study offers insight into what people ate before agriculture

Chemical markers in the bones and teeth from the remains of seven individuals were analyzed, along with several isolated teeth, dating back 15,000 years.
(From left) Nanami Fukuoka, Natsumi Matsunaga and Riana Tashima, students from Denshukan High School in Yanagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, and Mutsumi Machitori, their teacher, show their research in late March.
JAPAN / History / Regional Voices: Kyushu
May 6, 2024

Students in Fukuoka learn of school's tragic past in World War II

After investigating a cenotaph at their school, pupils researched 17 alumni who died at a nearby munitions factory.
For a little more than a decade, scientists have been studying a subset of people they call "super-agers.” These individuals are age 80 and older, but they have the memory ability of a person 20 to 30 years younger.
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 30, 2024

A peek inside the brains of ‘super-agers’

New research explores why some octogenarians have exceptional memories.
The United Nations Security Council votes on a Gaza resolution that demands an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and unconditional release of all hostages, at the U.N.'s headquarters in New York on March 25. So far, such resolutions have proven ineffective.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 30, 2024

Can ‘minilaterals’ save the world?

Minilateral partnerships offer a new approach to addressing regional challenges effectively and ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.
A worker organizes cannabis flowers before the opening of the first legal recreational marijuana dispensary, located in the East Village in the Manhattan borough of New York, on Dec. 29, 2022.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
May 1, 2024

Marijuana could be reclassified in U.S. as less dangerous

The rumored move would ease access to cannabis for patients and researchers studying its medical applications without decriminalizing it.
A wounded Palestinian man and his injured son in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday
WORLD
May 2, 2024

U.S. surgeon in Gaza: Nothing prepared me for scale of injuries

Shariq Sayeed said that the vast majority of cases he dealt with involved amputation.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

U.S. and Saudi Arabia near defense pact meant to reshape Middle East

Though many obstacles remain, there is optimism Washington and Riyadh could reach a framework defense deal within weeks.
The arrests for Gaza-related posts indicate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime will take a hard line against citizens not toeing the line when it comes to normalizing ties with Israel.
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

Saudi Arabia steps up Gaza-related arrests as Israel ties edge closer

The arrests are said to reflect a desire by authorities to deter the making of online statements about the war in Gaza that might impact national security.
Local residents look at damage at a site of a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

U.S. issues hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia and takes aim at Chinese firms

Of the nearly 300 targets onto which the U.S. imposed sanctions, 20 are companies based in China and Hong Kong.
Manahel al-Otaibi wears western clothes in the Saudi capital Riyadh in September 2019. Human rights groups have denounced an 11-year prison term recently handed down by a counterterrorism court to the Saudi fitness instructor and women's rights activist.
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

Saudi Arabia cracks down on online speech, jailing critics for decades

Fitness influencer Manahel al-Otaibi was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison after criticizing male guardianship laws and women's dress requirements.
A guide stands next to a CV9040 infantry fighting vehicle and other military hardware at an exhibition displaying equipment captured by the Russian army from Ukrainian forces in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, at the Victory Park open-air museum on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow on Wednesday
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

Russians who fled war return, in boost for Putin’s war economy

Many Russians are returning to their homeland after finding countries abroad have become less accommodating for them — a gain for the domestic economy.
Attendees at the Leap technology conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 6, 202. The oil-rich country is plowing money into glitzy events, computing power and artificial intelligence research, putting it in the middle of an escalating U.S.-China struggle for technological influence.
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

‘To the future’: Saudi Arabia spends big to become an AI superpower

Saudi Arabia was long a financial spigot for tech, but is now building its own industry.
China's President Xi Jinping speaks at the Senior Chinese Leader Event held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco on Nov. 15, 2023.
WORLD / Politics
May 3, 2024

Xi's trip to Europe may lay bare West's divisions over China strategy

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit France and pro-Russia nations Serbia and Hungary, which are also large recipients of Chinese investment.
Police walk past people operating bulldozers to remove the remnants of a protest encampment in support of Palestinians that police broke down the previous night on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
May 3, 2024

Fresh chaos and arrests as police flatten camp at UCLA

In the pre-dawn hours, helmeted police swarmed a tent city set up at the University of California in Los Angeles, using flash bangs and riot gear.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 20.
WORLD / Politics
May 3, 2024

U.S. and Saudi Arabia finalizing details of security pact, sources say

For now, negotiators have prioritized a bilateral security accord that would then be part of a wider package presented to Israel.

Longform

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