World

  Sri Lanka's President and National People's Power (NPP) party leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake addresses supporters during a rally ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections, in Colombo, Nov. 11, 2024. New Delhi — Sri Lanka will choose a new parliament Thursday in an election that is seen as crucial for the country’s new left-leaning president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who swept to power in September on an anti-corruption platform amid a wave of dissatisfaction with established political parties. Dissanayake’s National People\'s Power (NPP) coalition currently has only three seats in the 225-member parliament, constraining his ability to usher in the systemic changes he says are necessary to tackle corruption and improve econom...

  President Joe Biden, right, shakes hands with Israel's President Isaac Herzog during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Nov. 12, 2024. President Joe Biden reiterated his “ironclad” defense of Israel during a Tuesday Oval Office meeting with Israel’s president – and he echoed the wish to see the return of the remaining hostages still held by militant group Hamas after more than a year of brutal conflict in Gaza. “My commitment to Israel is ironclad,” Biden told President Isaac Herzog during their morning meeting in the White House. “And we share a deep friendship.” Herzog underscored his government’s main objective: “First and foremost, we have to get the hostages back.” “It all starts in Tehran,” h...

  FILE - Soldiers of the Chad Army sit on the back of a Land Cruiser at the Koundoul market, 25 km from N'Djamena, Jan. 3, 2020, upon their return after a months-long mission fighting Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria. Yaoundé, Cameroon — The government of Chad said Tuesday that hundreds of Boko Haram fighters are fleeing the central African state’s territory and crossing over into Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria. State TV reports the fighters fled after clashes with Chadian forces over the weekend that killed more than 100 Boko Haram fighters as well as close to 20 Chadian soldiers. Chad state TV reports that assaults have continued against Boko Haram strongholds after the central African state’s military saw almost 20 soldiers ki...

  Volunteers clean up around a marketplace affected by flooding in Catarroja, Valencia, Spain, Nov. 11, 2024. CATARROJA, Spain — Thousands of students in Spain\'s eastern Valencia region returned to classes on Monday, two weeks after floods killed over 200 people and devastated towns in the area. Controversy over the regional government\'s handling of the floods still rages, and a teachers\' union accused it of exaggerating the number returning and leaving the clean-up to teachers and pupils. Twenty-three people remain missing in the Valencia region after heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, sending tides of muddy water through densely populated city suburbs, drowning people in cars and underground car parks, and collapsing homes. ...

  Pedestrians walk along a road engulfed in thick smog in Lahore, Pakistan, Nov. 11, 2024. Islamabad — The United Nations has warned that highly polluted air in Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab, is posing severe risks to people, including more than 11 million children under the age of five. Air pollution levels broke records in the provincial capital, Lahore, and several other districts this past week, surpassing the World Health Organization\'s air quality guidelines by more than 100 times, the U.N. Children\'s Fund, or UNICEF, reported in a statement Monday. It stated that hundreds of people, including dozens of children, have been hospitalized in hard-hit cities, and the pollution is so severe that it is visible from space. ...

  Rescuers carry the body of a woman found under debris of an apartment building which was hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, in this handout picture released November 12, 2024. A Russian airstrike on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown killed a mother and her three children and left 14 people wounded, officials said Tuesday. Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said rescue and recovery operations were complete after the residential building in Kryvyi Rig was hit a day earlier. The office of the prosecutor general said a 32-year-old woman and children who were 10, 2 and 2 months old were killed. In Russia’s Belgorod region, a Ukrainian drone atta...

  Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan president, and Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, pose for a group photo at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 12, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. BAKU, Azerbaijan — World leaders are converging Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan although the big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent, unlike past climate talks which had the star power of a soccer World Cup. But 2024\'s climate talks are more like the International Chess Federation world championship, lacking recognizable names but big on nerd power and strategy. The top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries will not appear. Their nations are responsible for more than 70% of 2023\...

  FILE - Russian Security Council's Secretary Sergei Shoigu is shown in Saint Petersburg, Russia, September 12, 2024. MOSCOW — The key task for Russia and China is to counter any attempt by the United States to contain their countries, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin told China\'s foreign minister on Tuesday. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose steep tariffs on China and other countries, raising fears of a trade war and the United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat. China\'s Xi Jinping and Putin in May pledged a "new era" of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold W...

  FILE - Members of an Iraqi Shiite militant group attend a funeral for group members killed by a U.S. airstrike, in Baghdad, Feb. 4, 2024. In February, the U.S. struck 85-plus targets in Iraq and Syria linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. washington — The U.S. military said Monday that it had carried out strikes against nine targets associated with Iranian groups in Syria. In a statement, the U.S. military said the strikes were made against two locations in Syria and were a response to several attacks on U.S. personnel in Syria in the past 24 hours. The U.S. has occasionally carried out strikes against targets linked to Iran in both Iraq and Syria. In February, the U.S. launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against ...

  FILE - The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby walks through Westminster in London on Sept. 14, 2022. LONDON — The head of the Church of England, spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, is under pressure to resign after an investigation found that he failed to inform police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it. Some members of the General Synod, the church\'s national assembly, have started a petition calling on Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to step down, saying he had "lost the confidence of his clergy." The petition had garnered more than 1,800 signatures on Change.org by late morning London time on Monday. Compounding the pressu...