WorldNews

Almost all the remaining oil has been pumped from a Japanese ship that ran aground off the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, but its initial spill of 1,000 tons of fuel has severely damaged the island’s coral reefs and once pristine coast, environmental groups said Thursday. Nearly all …

Lebanon’s parliament speaker called on Thursday for quickly forming a new government in the first legislative session since the catastrophic explosion that killed 172 people last week and pushed the cabinet to resign. Security forces were heavily deployed in the capital of Beirut, stopping protesters from reaching a conference centre …

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Thursday removed popular video game Fortnite from their app stores for violating the companies’ in-app payment guidelines, prompting developer Epic Games to file federal antitrust lawsuits challenging the two companies’ rules. Apple and Google cited a direct payment feature rolled out on the …

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday that sweeping new U.S. sanctions amounted to a new stage of economic warfare against his government and were part of Washington’s long-standing efforts to “choke” Syrians’ living standards. In a speech to deputies at the presidential palace, Assad also blamed the sanctions, known …

Hundreds of women rallied across the capital of Belarus on Wednesday to protest a brutal police crackdown that has left hundreds injured and thousands detained while challenging election results extending the 26-year rule of the country’s authoritarian leader. In several parts of Minsk, groups of women formed human chains, chanting …

New Zealand was scrambling to trace the source of its first coronavirus outbreak in more than three months, reporting 13 new community infections on Thursday, after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had sought to eradicate the virus with a hard lockdown. The resurgence of COVID-19 comes just weeks before a scheduled …

Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is an “ocean world” with a big reservoir of salty water under its frigid surface, scientists said in findings that raise interest in this dwarf planet as a possible outpost for life. Research published Monday based on data …

Last year, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Hong Kong to demand full democracy, many of them encouraged by a tabloid newspaper critical of China’s ruling Communist Party. On Tuesday, they lined up at newsstands across the city to buy that same paper in a bid …

New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were taken to hospitals and died there. …

Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanouskaya says she fled to Lithuania for the sake of her children, after two nights of clashes following the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko. Tikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher, emerged from obscurity to mount the biggest challenge in years to Lukashenko, taking her husband’s …