World

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the U.S. mission to protect commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz would be temporary and other nations would soon have to take responsibility, emphasizing that the fragile ceasefire with Iran remained in place despite attacks on U.S. ships a day earlier.

KYIV – Russian attacks throughout eastern Ukraine killed at least 27 people on Tuesday, including 12 in one of the worst strikes so far this year, hours before a midnight deadline ushering in an open-ended ceasefire proposed by Kyiv.

Ukrainian drones are regularly hitting targets deep inside Russia, reaching to the Ural Mountains and communities where most people had seen the war as a distant problem.

MOSCOW — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine will implement a ceasefire from midnight on Wednesday, shortly after Russia ordered a truce to coincide with Victory Day commemorations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. “We believe that human life is far more valuable than any anniversary ‘celebration’,” Zelenskyy said in a post announcing the ceasefire on X. “In this ...

Lee Chun Ho's voice cracked as he sat in the witness chair recounting the day that Hong Kong's worst fire in decades tore through his apartment complex, killing his mother, his elder brother, his 15-month-old niece and the family's live-in maid.

The U.S. military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats and intercepted Iranian cruise missiles and drones fired by Tehran as it sought to thwart a new U.S. naval effort to open shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

DUBAI – A tanker reported being hit by unknown projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime security organization said on Monday, shortly after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would start helping free ships stranded in the Gulf by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

The Amazon rainforest has been plundered for decades for rubber, timber and gold. Now, illegal prospectors are setting their sights on a new treasure: critical minerals coveted by much of the world.

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi'ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters, according to previously unreported casualty estimates from within the group.

MEXICO CITY – The governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, who has been accused by the U.S. of aiding one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels, said on Friday he would step down temporarily as a local investigation into the charges proceeds.

WASHINGTON – The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops from NATO ally Germany, the Pentagon announced Friday, as a rift over the Iran war widens between President Donald Trump and Europe.

Amsterdam is famously a place where anything goes. Prostitution is legal. Coffee shops sell marijuana and hashish. Truffles laced with the psychoactive compounds found in hallucinogenic mushrooms are available at “smart shops.”

Key Republicans in Congress are growing impatient about the complex and costly conflict in the Middle East as the war reaches its 60-day mark, pivoting after weeks of deferring to President Donald Trump to a more skeptical posture.

Iran’s record internet blackout is emerging as a key dividing line between the country’s powerful security apparatus and its civilian government, underlining how the war with the U.S. has extended the military’s control over daily life. Top government officials have become increasingly vocal about their opposition to the shutdown, imposed by authorities led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard ...

TOKYO – Japan’s relaxation of its weapons-export rules opens a path for talks that could one day lead to Tokyo supplying military equipment to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion, Kyiv’s ambassador to Japan told Reuters.

President Donald Trump posted online Thursday that he would remove tariffs on some whiskey, a move that could ease trade tensions for Scotch whisky and Kentucky bourbon producers.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum denounced the U.S. prosecution of a sitting Mexican governor and other officials on drug trafficking charges as “political,” and said Thursday that Mexico would not comply with Washington’s demands that the accused be arrested and extradited to the United States.