World

BRUSSELS – Ukraine opened the first phase of membership talks with the European Union on Monday, a key step in Kyiv’s efforts to anchor itself in Western political structures as ​it fights Russia’s invasion.

The United States is spending almost $25,000 every month to store contraceptives in Belgium that were originally bought for use in poorer nations but are now mainly unusable, according to a report from officials reviewed by Reuters. 

President Donald Trump joined global leaders on Monday at the Group of Seven summit at a French lakeside resort, where he touted his preliminary deal to end the Iran war and said he would now seek to end the fighting in Ukraine and Lebanon.

President Xi Jinping is shifting tactics in his campaign to pressure Taiwan, ramping up diplomatic isolation of the island while dialing down provocative displays of military aggression. Taiwan recorded a daily average of five Chinese war planes crossing the Taiwan Strait’s buffer line with China through May this year — half the number logged in same period of 2025. In March, Beijing didn’t ...

LONDON – Britain’s banks recorded the sharpest increase in losses to certain types of fraud since the COVID-era boom in technology-enabled scams, renewing calls for government action against platforms such as Meta where many ​cases originate.

The cabinet director and inspector general at Haiti’s Defense Ministry was kidnapped this week, along with his wife and their 6-year-old U.S. citizen daughter while seeking medical care in Port-au-Prince for their ailing child, according to two sources familiar with the incident. James Boyard, a Haitian police officer and security expert, was abducted Thursday morning in Raimbol in the ...

Thirteen people were injured and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, a symbol of Ukrainian spiritual and cultural history, caught fire following a major Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital, authorities said early on Monday, urging residents to take ​shelter.

China’s consumer spending may have contracted for the first time since the pandemic, a setback that would extend a slowdown in an economy whose momentum is faltering despite booming trade. After a surprise acceleration to start the year, the world’s second-biggest economy is cooling rapidly, with investment resuming declines and consumption hobbled by a weak job market and faster inflation. ...

WASHINGTON – The United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war and will hold an official signing ceremony on Friday in Switzerland, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on social media early on Monday.

LONDON – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday he would ban social media sites for under-16s and impose restrictions on gaming and live-streaming platforms, in a fightback against big tech that goes further than any other country.

Iran circulated competing versions of a proposed interim agreement with the U.S., even as President Donald Trump stuck to his Sunday timeline to sign a deal. All of the texts — there were at least three — include similar elements around reopening the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, giving Iran sanctions relief and opening the door to longer-term negotiations around its nuclear program. But ...

GENEVA – Geneva police on Sunday fired tear gas at protesters who set fire to a Tesla vehicle and smashed windows at a United Nations agency as they vented their ​anger at a Group of Seven summit about to take place across the border in France.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Trump administration officials have been clear that they don’t want to trigger a vote in Congress by changing the “fundamental architecture” of the North American free trade deal. Carney said the three countries in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement are currently holding separate, bilateral talks on a variety of trade irritants in part because no ...

President Donald Trump will meet with U.S. partners in the Middle East at the Group of Seven leaders’ summit in France next week, underscoring the outsized role the war in Iran continues to play as European allies grapple with the global economic fallout. The president will hold bilateral meetings with the leaders of France, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt as well as India, according to ...

Investor interest in Portugal’s golden visa, Europe’s hottest residency-by-investment program, is cooling after the government doubled the time that foreigners must wait to qualify for Portuguese citizenship.

Amid a tense standoff with the Trump administration, Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has announced sweeping reforms that would grant more autonomy to state enterprises, expand private-sector activities and allow Cubans on the island and abroad to invest on equal footing with foreign investors.

Authorities are unable to determine the true extent of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo because emergency workers can’t find all the missing contacts of patients infected by the virus, Africa’s top health official said. Congo reported 676 confirmed cases and 136 deaths as of June 10, the National Institute of Public Health said. The outbreak has spread into three ...