BRASÃLIA, Brazil – Brazil's leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returns triumphant to the presidency Sunday after years out in the cold, with plans for a spectacular inauguration amid ultra-tight security. Some 300,000 revelers and more than a dozen heads of state and government are...
Photo: Shutterstock NEW YORK, United States – New York's first legal recreational marijuana dispensary opened on Thursday in the heart of Manhattan. More than 100 people crowded into the dispensary in New York City's East Village, run by the nonprofit Housing Works, a group dedicated to...
Aung San Suu Kyi (AFP/File) NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar – A Myanmar junta court jailed ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi for seven years for corruption on Friday, a legal source told AFP, ending the 18-month trial of the Nobel laureate. Suu Kyi was sentenced to seven years on five counts of...
Passengers walk at the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong on December 28, 2022. (Philip FONG / AFP) SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea took steps on Friday to limit travelers from mainland China, imposing visa restrictions, testing requirements and limiting flights as Beijing...
BEIJING, China – China has insisted the data it publishes on Covid-19 deaths has always been transparent, state media reported, despite the official figures being tiny compared with other countries and its hospitals overwhelmed with infections. A man receives a Covid-19 vaccine in Qingzhou,...
VATICAN CITY, Holy See – The Catholic Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, has been rocked by claims a prominent priest abused several women, a case raising questions about how the Church sanctions offenders. Father Marko Rupnik, a 68-year-old Slovenian priest and world-renowned...
VATICAN CITY, Holy See – Former pope Benedict XVI is "lucid and alert" and his condition remains serious but stable, the Vatican said Thursday, the day after revealing the 95-year-old's health had deteriorated. Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign as...
SEOUL, South Korea – President Yoon Suk-yeol said Thursday that South Korea must boost its preparedness to respond to airspace intrusions after the military failed to shoot down five North Korean drones that crossed the border. The Monday intrusion by the drones -- one of which flew close to the...
WASHINGTON, United States – A Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously within 20 feet (six meters) of a much larger US air force surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea, the US military said Thursday. Credit: iStock Photo In the December 21 incident, a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter pilot...
Newly sworn-in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the first cabinet meeting of his new government in Jerusalem, on December 29, 2022. Netanyahu was sworn in as prime minister after a stint in opposition, heading what analysts call the most right-wing government in the country's...
GENEVA, Switzerland – Restrictions some countries have introduced in response to China's Covid-19 surge are "understandable", given the lack of information from Beijing, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (AFP/File) WHO chief Tedros...
BEIJING, China – The United States joined nations imposing Covid tests on travelers from China after Beijing dropped foreign travel curbs despite surging cases, but the EU's health agency said Thursday such measures weren't warranted in the bloc. A health worker takes a swab sample from a...
