World

Around 9 a.m. Sunday near the Strait of Gibraltar, two people on board the roughly 50-foot Alboran Cognac reported blows to the vessel’s hull and saw damage to the rudder as water flowed into the ship, Spain’s maritime rescue agency said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to allies to provide Ukraine with air-defense batteries to shield its second-biggest city as Russia launched a large-scale offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

A new Russian offensive into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region has forced more than 6,000 people to evacuate this small city since Friday, fearing for their lives and racing to escape a second occupation more than two years after Moscow’s troops first crossed the border with columns of tanks.

Wildfires in Canada have roared back to life, sending harmful smoke into the northern United States - an unwelcome reminder of last summer’s historic fire season that also repeatedly sent plumes of noxious haze southward.

President Vladimir Putin’s surprise late-night shuffle of his defense and security team signals his determination to mobilize Russia’s war economy for a long and intensified conflict in Ukraine against the West. 

In the past three days, Russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery and lethal drones, have poured across Ukraine's northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, and more square miles per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has removed Sergei Shoigu from his longtime position as defense minister and appointed him to lead the country’s security and defense council, a consultative body that advises the president, in a major shake-up of the Kremlin’s security team, the Kremlin said Sunday.

Close-quarters combat between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops raged in northern Gaza Strip over the weekend, both sides said Sunday, in a familiar scenario: Israeli forces returning to an area where they had defeated Hamas earlier only to see the group reconstitute in the power vacuum left behind.

Switzerland was crowned winner of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest in the early hours of Sunday morning, with singer Nemo becoming the first nonbinary person to win the world’s biggest music contest.

Bars of gold, stacks of cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and foreign intelligence officials could all make cameo appearances as Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) goes on trial Monday on federal charges that he used his position and influence to benefit a trio of businessmen who were plying him with luxury gifts.

The night sky dazzled people across the United States and Europe on Friday evening as an extreme geomagnetic storm brought aurora displays not usually seen at lower latitudes - beautiful streaks of green, purple and pink lights. If you missed it, though, you can find awe in many of Earth’s other phenomena.

Israel ordered tens of thousands of people to leave Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, signaling an imminent push by Israeli forces into the city’s most urban districts, a move that could trigger the White House to freeze offensive weapons shipments.

The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels.

When a news crew’s helicopter swept over the catastrophic floods in Brazil on Wednesday, it captured a striking image: a horse trapped on a strip of a tin roof, surrounded by the same murky waters that had left entire neighborhoods looking as though they had been swallowed by a river.

Organized crime groups are turning Mexico’s elections into a literal battleground, making the campaign this year one of the deadliest in the country’s modern history. More than two dozen candidates have been killed leading up to the June 2 vote; hundreds have dropped out of the race.

The gulf between what the United States military is recommending and what Israel appears intent on doing in the Gaza Strip could not be wider.

A failed crop, followed by a wave of financial speculation, put cocoa prices on a roller coaster this year, rattling an industry reliant on inexpensive crops and labor. This is not how things normally go in the cocoa market.