World

  FILE - International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi during a meeting with the Japanese government in Tokyo Thursday, March 14, 2024. Tehran, Iran — International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi is set to visit Tehran on Wednesday for crucial talks on Iran\'s nuclear program, warning just ahead of his trip that room for maneuver is narrowing. His visit comes only two days after the defense minister of Iran\'s nemesis Israel warned the Islamic republic was "more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities". Israel has long accused Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, a claim Tehran denies. The two countries have traded missile strikes this year, as tensions soar over Israe...

  Ninawa Inu Pereira Nunes, President of the Federation of the Huni Kuin indigenous people in Brazil's state of Acre, gives an interview during the United Nations climate change conference COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan November 13, 2024. BAKU, Azerbaijan — When more than two dozen world leaders deliver remarks at the United Nations\' annual climate conference on Wednesday, many have detailed their nations\' firsthand experience with the catastrophic weather that has come with climate change. “Over the past year, catastrophic floods in Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as well as in southern Croatia have shown the devastating impact of rising temperatures,” said Croatia\'s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic. “The Mediterranean, one of ...

  FILE - An Israeli police officer investigates at the scene where a rocket fired from Lebanon landed in Israel, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, near Israel's border with Lebanon in northern Israel, Oct. 7, 2024. WASHINGTON — Israel\'s war against Hezbollah and Hamas, while inflicting considerable damage, has yet to strike a crippling blow to either of the Iran-backed terror groups, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official. The acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) said Tuesday that the impact of Israeli intelligence operations, along with repeated military airstrikes and ground offensives in Lebanon and Gaza, have severely diminished the ability of both gro...

  FILE - A U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter conducts low-level flight operations in Northeast Syria, Oct. 29, 2024. American forces on Tuesday carried out strikes against targets linked to an Iran-backed group in Syria, the U.S. military said, with a war monitor saying the attacks killed five fighters. The raids were in response to a rocket attack on U.S. troops in the country, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said. The strikes targeted the group\'s "weapons storage and logistics headquarters facility... in response to a rocket attack on U.S. personnel," CENTCOM said in a post on social media that did not identify the group by name. "There was no damage to U.S. facilities and no injuries to US or partner forces durin...

  Samantha Harvey poses with the trophy and her book "Orbital" after winning the Booker Prize award 2024, in London, Nov. 12, 2024. LONDON — British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with "Orbital," a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station that ponders the beauty and fragility of the Earth. Harvey was awarded the 50,000-pound ($64,000) prize for what she has called a "space pastoral" about six orbiting astronauts, which she began writing during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The confined characters loop through 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over the course of a day, trapped in one another\'s company and transfixed by the globe\'s ever-changing vistas...

  FILE - A member of the Taliban and other people stand at the site of a public execution in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, April 18, 2015. A convicted murdered is scheduled to be executed on Nov. 13, 2024, in Gardez, in the country's Paktia province. Islamabad — Taliban authorities in eastern Afghanistan are scheduled to publicly execute a convicted murderer on Wednesday, citing the Islamic concept of retributive justice, or qisas. The early morning punishment will be carried out at a sports stadium in Gardez, the capital of the Paktia province, according to a local language official announcement Tuesday through the X social media platform. It invited the public, religious scholars, and civilian and military officials to attend the ...

  FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump, right, chats with Chinese President Xi Jinping, on Aug. 31, 2019, in Beijing. Johannesburg — President-elect Donald Trump talked tough on China during his campaign, vowing to impose higher and sweeping tariffs on imports from the Asian giant. Beijing will now also be closely watching the incoming administration’s movements further afield, in Africa, where U.S.-China rivalry is high. Experts disagree on what a second Trump term will mean for Beijing’s ambitions on the continent, with some saying it could be a boon for China – Africa’s biggest trade partner – if the U.S. pursues an isolationist, “America First” agenda that mostly ignores the region. But Tibor Nagy, who served as Trump’s Assistant Secre...

  FILE - A man walks by a house hit in fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, an area torn by fighting between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, April 25, 2023. United Nations — The United Nations renewed its appeal for an immediate cease-fire in Sudan on Tuesday, with officials warning that civilians are paying a high price for the fighting, as external parties fuel the conflict by supplying weapons. “It is long past time for the warring parties to come to the negotiating table,” said U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo. “The only path out of this conflict is a negotiated political solution.” DiCarlo said that in the absence of a nationwide cease-fire, local ones could give civilians some respite and create openings for d...

  FILE - The Department of the Treasury's seal is seen outside the Treasury Department building in Washington, May 4, 2021. Washington — The United States sanctioned a senior Sudanese paramilitary official on Tuesday, accusing him of overseeing human rights abuses in his country\'s West Darfur region. The Treasury Department announced the sanctions on Abdel Rahman Joma\'a Barakallah, a commander with Sudan\'s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which it accused of being "a primary party responsible for the ongoing violence against civilians in Sudan." Sudan has been gripped by a deadly conflict since April 2023 between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by his former deputy, General Moh...

  Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba waits after the first vote for a new prime minister at a special parliamentary session of the lower house, Nov. 11, 2024, in Tokyo. TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, battered in parliamentary elections last month, has survived a rare runoff vote against the opposition to remain the country\'s leader but he still faces turmoil ahead. One of his top priorities is dealing with the aftermath of a major corruption scandal in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, in which dozens of lawmakers from the party are alleged to have pocketed profits from event ticket sales as kickbacks. Ishiba also now has a much-emboldened, opposition eager to push through policies long stymied by the LDP. Su...