KATHMANDU, Nepal -- Nepal has issued a record 454 permits to climb Mount Everest this spring, officials said Monday, four years after at least four deaths on the world's highest peak were blamed on overcrowding. "This is the highest number of permits the department has issued to summit Mount...
LONDON, United Kingdom -- Extreme weather events in Malawi and Pakistan have driven "very sharp" rises in malaria infections and deaths, a global health chief said ahead of World Malaria Day on April 25. Cases in Pakistan last year, after devastating floods left a third of the country under water,...
SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol flew to Washington Monday for a six-day state visit, as the allies move to bulk up military cooperation over North Korea's expanding nuclear threats. Pyongyang has conducted another record-breaking string of sanctions-defying launches this...
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Battles raging in Sudan have sparked multiple evacuation operations to rescue foreign citizens or embassy staff by road, air and sea. The main airport in the capital Khartoum has been the site of heavy fighting and is under the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces...
BEIJING, China -- China said it respected the "sovereign state status" of all ex-Soviet countries on Monday, after Beijing's ambassador to France sparked outrage in Europe by questioning the sovereignty of those nations. "China respects the sovereign state status of the participating republics after...
CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia launched its biggest defence overhaul in decades Monday, vowing to turn a military that is "no longer fit for purpose" into a fighting force that could deter China or any would-be foe. Defence Minister Richard Marles unveiled a strategic review that called for a...
WASHINGTON, United States -- The US Supreme Court on Friday temporarily preserved access to a widely used abortion pill, freezing rulings by lower courts that would have banned or severely restricted availability of the drug. Two conservative justices disagreed with the decision in the most...
VALDIVIA, Chile -- In a forest in southern Chile, a giant tree has survived for thousands of years and is in the process of being recognized as the oldest in the world. Known as the "Great Grandfather," the trunk of this tree measuring four meters (13 feet) in diameter and 28 meters tall is also...
SYDNEY, Australia -- Deep-sea explorers said Saturday they had located the wreck of a World War II Japanese transport ship, the Montevideo Maru, which was torpedoed off the Philippines, killing nearly 1,000 Australians aboard. The ship -- sunk on July 1, 1942, by a US submarine unaware it was...
TOKYO, Japan -- Dozens of bawling Japanese babies faced off Saturday in a traditional "crying sumo" ritual believed to bring the infants good health, which returned for the first time in four years after the pandemic. Pairs of toddlers wearing ceremonial sumo aprons were held up by their parents and...
PARIS, France -- Scientists have succeeded in saving samples of ancient Arctic ice for analysis in a race against time before it melts away due to climate change, they said this week. The eight French, Italian and Norwegian researchers camped in Norway's Svalbard archipelago in March and April,...
MADRID, Spain -- Two people died and ten were injured in a fire sparked when a waiter at a Madrid restaurant flambeed a dish, accidentally setting decorations ablaze, authorities and local media reported Saturday. Madrid's SAMUR emergency services "treated 12 people in this disaster," two of whom...
