KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's Taliban rulers ordered all female presenters on TV channels to cover their faces on air, the country's biggest media outlet said Thursday.
The order came in a statement from the Taliban's Virtue and Vice Ministry, tasked with enforcing the group's rulings, as well as from the Information and Culture Ministry, the TOLOnews channel said in a tweet.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The fate of hundreds of Ukrainian fighters who surrendered after holding out against punishing attacks on Mariupol’s steel factory hung in the balance Thursday, amid international fears that the Russians may take reprisals against the prisoners.
Middle East
GENEVA (AP) — Breaking its recent silence on prisoners of war, the Red Cross said Thursday it has registered “hundreds” of Ukrainian prisoners of war who left the giant Azovstal steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol after holding out in a weeks-long standoff with besieging Russian forces.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Boeing’s crew capsule rocketed into orbit Thursday on a repeat test flight without astronauts, after years of being grounded by flaws that could have doomed the spacecraft.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Friday that nearly 10% of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first COVID-19 outbreak, as outside experts question the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis.
ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey's leader flatly opposes having Sweden and Finland join NATO, but the military alliance's chief said Thursday he was confident the standoff would be resolved and the two Nordic nations would have their membership requests approved soon.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the United States for the $40 billion aid package, which got final congressional approval on Thursday.
“This is a demonstration of strong leadership and a necessary contribution to our common defense of freedom,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation.
LONDON (AP) — Tom Cruise has said he and Prince William “have a lot in common” as Britain's royals joined the Hollywood star on the red carpet in London for the U.K. premiere of the new “Top Gun” movie.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Chile holds itself out as a global leader on climate change. Nearly 22% of Chile’s electricity is generated by solar and wind farms, putting it far ahead of both the global average, 10%, and the United States, at 13%.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — U2 frontman Bono hailed Pope Francis for promoting “inclusivity” on Thursday as he met with the pontiff in Rome alongside students attending an educational program launched by the pope.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s financial trial took a series of surreal turns Thursday when a former suspect-turned-star witness was thrown out of the tribunal and a defendant asserted in court documents that she escorted two emissaries of Russian President Vladimir Putin into the Holy See to negotiate the return of holy relics to the Russian Orthodox Church.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's Metropolitan Police told Prime Minister Boris Johnson he faced no further action over lockdown-breaching gatherings at his official residence and other government sites, after the force said Thursday it has concluded its investigation into politicians' parties that violated the country's coronavirus restrictions.
KOENIGSWINTER, Germany (AP) — Finance ministers for the Group of Seven leading economies grappled Thursday with deepening inflation concerns and the immediate effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine, with U.S.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Vangelis, the Greek electronic composer who wrote the unforgettable Academy Award-winning score for the film “Chariots of Fire” and music for dozens of other movies, documentaries and TV series, has died at 79.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden embarked Thursday on a six-day trip to South Korea and Japan aiming to build rapport with the two nations’ leaders while also sending an unmistakable message to China: Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine should give Beijing pause about its own saber-rattling in the Pacific.
GENEVA (AP) — Britain and Rwanda on Thursday faced down two United Nations agencies that have sharply criticized their controversial plan in which Britain expects to send some asylum-seekers from the U.K.
BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers agreed Thursday to strip former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of his office and staff after he maintained and defended his long-standing ties with Russia and its energy sector despite the invasion of Ukraine.
BERLIN (AP) — A school employee was seriously wounded by an assailant wielding a crossbow in an attack Thursday at a high school in the northern German city of Bremerhaven and a suspect was detained, investigators said.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter is stepping up its fight against misinformation with a new policy cracking down on posts that spread potentially dangerous false stories. The change is part of a broader effort to promote accurate information during times of conflict or crisis.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Dozens of prominent conservatives from Europe, the United States and elsewhere gathered Thursday in Hungary as the American Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, was held in Europe for the first time.
BERLIN (AP) — Gusts of wind of up to 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) hit areas in western and northwestern Germany on Thursday after the national weather service warned that heavy storms could bring the possibility of tornadoes.
BERLIN (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic is not over yet, Germany's health minister warned Thursday as the country's highest court approved rules requiring health workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian soldier facing the first war crimes trial since the start of the war in Ukraine testified Thursday that he shot a civilian on orders from two officers and pleaded for his victim's widow to forgive him.
BEIJING (AP) — The locked-down Chinese metropolis of Shanghai will reopen four of its 20 subway lines Sunday as it slowly eases pandemic restrictions that have kept most residents in their housing complexes for more than six weeks.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — On a recent nighttime visit to a drugstore, a double-masked Kim Jong Un lamented the slow delivery of medicine. Separately, the North Korean leader's lieutenants have quarantined hundreds of thousands of suspected COVID-19 patients and urged people with mild symptoms to take willow leaf or honeysuckle tea.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday reported 262,270 more suspected COVID-19 cases as its pandemic caseload neared 2 million — a week after the country acknowledged the outbreak and scrambled to slow infections in its unvaccinated population.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — At Lautoka harbor in the heart of Fiji's sugar cane region, five U.S. federal agents boarded the Russian-owned Amadea, a luxurious superyacht the length of a football field.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government said Thursday it will hand out an extra few hundred dollars to more than 2 million lower-income adults to help them navigate what it describes as “the peak of the global inflation storm.”
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — A petition to stop the revival of the 118-year-old Jonglei Canal project in South Sudan, started by one of the country’s top academics, is gaining traction in the country, with the waterway touted as a catastrophic environmental and social disaster for the country’s Sudd wetlands.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Nearly 1,000 last-ditch Ukrainian fighters who had held out inside Mariupol's pulverized steel plant have surrendered, Russia said Wednesday, as the battle that turned the city into a worldwide symbol of defiance and suffering drew toward a close.
SEOUL (AP) — For many South Koreans, the former presidential palace in Seoul was a little-visited, heavily secured mountainside landmark. That's now changed as thousands have been allowed a look inside for the first time in 74 years.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan protesters lit flames and offered prayers Wednesday remembering thousands — including ethnic Tamil civilians — killed in the final stages of the country’s decadeslong civil war, in the first-ever event where mostly majority ethnic Sinhalese openly memorialized the minority group.
LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portuguese health authorities on Wednesday confirmed five cases of monkeypox in young men, and Britain announced two more new cases, marking an unusual outbreak in Europe of a disease typically limited to Africa.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States struggled Wednesday to get clarity from Turkey over the severity of its opposition to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took an increasingly tough line against their membership bids.
BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO envoys failed to reach a consensus Wednesday on whether to start membership talks with Finland and Sweden, diplomats said, as Turkey renewed its objections to the two Nordic countries joining.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations on Wednesday significantly lowered its forecast for global economic growth this year from 4% to 3.1%, saying the war in Ukraine has triggered increasing global food and commodity prices and exacerbated inflationary pressures, upending the fragile recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s executive arm moved Wednesday to jump-start plans for the 27-nation bloc to abandon Russian energy amid the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, proposing a nearly 300 billion-euro ($315 billion) package that includes more efficient use of fuels and faster rollout of renewable power.
LONDON (AP) — A U.K. Conservative lawmaker was released on bail Wednesday while police investigate allegations of rape and sexual assault against him, the latest in a series of sexual misconduct allegations that have led some to label Britain's Parliament a toxic workplace.
GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations chief on Wednesday launched a five-point plan to jump-start broader use of renewable energies, hoping to revive world attention on climate change as the U.N.’s weather agency said greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification reached record highs last year.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Wednesday added hundreds of thousands of infections to its growing pandemic caseload but also said that a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak, a public health crisis it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about dire consequences.