The Chinese coast guard detained a Taiwanese fishing vessel in waters off China’s southeast coast on Tuesday night, in the latest flare-up of tensions around a group of frontline islands controlled by Taipei. In a statement, Taiwan’s coast guard said the fishing boat, Tachinman 88, was intercepted by two Chinese coast guard vessels near the Kinmen islands, which lie just miles ...

Voters in Britain are primed to end a 14-year era of Conservative rule, in a momentous general election that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is almost universally expected to lose. Sunak took the biggest gamble of his troubled premiership by calling the early vote, but he has struggled to turn around dire polling and appears on the cusp of defeat. If, ...

A club of Eurasian countries spearheaded by China and Russia to advance their leaders’ vision of an alternative world order is set to expand again this week – this time adding a staunch Russian ally that has openly supported Moscow’s war on Ukraine. The expected admission of Belarus to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its annual leaders’ summit in Astana, ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of starting a ceasefire in Gaza while Hamas remains in power, after The New York Times published an article citing six current and former security officials who said a truce would give Israeli troops time to prepare for a potential land war with Hezbollah. The officials, most of whom spoke anonymously to “discuss ...

As French citizens get set to vote in runoff parliamentary elections on Sunday hundreds of contenders have bowed out in an effort to block the far-right party from the gates of power. Over 200 candidates from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp and the left-wing alliance have stepped down in a bid to avoid splitting the vote. They’ve put aside their ...

More than a hundred people were killed in a crush at a religious gathering in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, according to local police and administration officials. The incident happened at a prayer meeting, known as a satsang, in the Mughal Garhi village in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh, officials said. The village in India’s most populous ...

Allegations of sexual abuse against a child by a Syrian man in Kayseri, Turkey, have sparked overnight riots that targeted Syrian businesses and cars in the city. According to Turkish state news agency Anadolu, a Syrian man was arrested on allegations that he sexually abused his seven-year-old female cousin, who is also Syrian, in a public bathroom at a market. ...

The head of Gaza’s largest hospital has claimed he was repeatedly tortured during his seven months in Israeli detention, following his sudden release Monday, in a move that highlighted growing rifts in the Israeli establishment. Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of the Al-Shifa medical complex, who was arrested in late November during the first of two Israeli raids on the ...

The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders on Monday for areas in southern Gaza including eastern Khan Younis and Rafah, forcing residents – many of whom were already displaced – to seek shelter elsewhere in what signals the possibility of another ground operation. The Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the territory’s last standing hospitals and which falls within the evacuation zone, ...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is paying his first visit to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale war began in February 2022, according to a Hungarian government spokesperson. “Viktor Orban arrived in Kyiv this morning to discuss European peace with President Volodymyr Zelensky,” spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs posted on X on Tuesday. Talks between the two leaders will focus on “possibilities for achieving peace, as well as ...