Three energy-rich Gulf Arab nations are racing to turn their influence over Donald Trump into tangible gains with the president set to visit next week. They have built personal ties with the president and collectively pledged trillions in US investments while casting themselves as key intermediaries in conflicts Trump wants to resolve, from Gaza to Ukraine and Iran. Now, they’re ...

I met the man who would become Pope Leo XIV in October 2023. We were standing outside the Vatican’s Synod Hall, and from my short conversation with Cardinal Robert Prevost, I could tell he was a good listener, thoughtful and had a certain presence about him. Our conversation took place on the sidelines of a major Vatican assembly focused on ...

The governor of the Mexican state of Baja California, which borders the US, said on social media Sunday that the United States withdrew tourist visas from her and her husband. Marina del Pilar Ávila, from the ruling Morena party, did not say why her visa was withdrawn. A spokesperson for the US Embassy said that visa records are confidential and ...

The Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for three ports in Yemen on Sunday night after vowing to “defend itself by itself” following a ceasefire deal between the US and the Houthis that excluded Israel. The warning, posted on social media by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic media spokesperson Avichay Adraee, warned people to evacuate the ports of Ras Isa, ...

Victory has a thousand fathers, as they say, but defeat is an orphan. And so it goes after the brief but bruising conflict between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan with both sides loudly talking up their successes while quietly down-playing losses. On India’s frantic television news channels, minutes after a US-brokered ceasefire came into force, the headline “Pakistan Surrenders” was ...

Pope Leo XIV indicated on Saturday that his papacy will follow closely in the footsteps of the late Pope Francis, telling church cardinals that they should take up that “precious legacy” and identifying artificial intelligence as a main challenge for working people and “human dignity.” Pope Leo, born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, was elected Thursday, becoming the first US-born ...

India and Pakistan agreed to an immediate ceasefire on Saturday, unexpectedly halting the worst fighting in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbors, just when their tit-for-tat strikes appeared to be spiraling out of control. Although US President Donald Trump was the first to announce the ceasefire and claimed credit for it, India and Pakistan have offered contradictory accounts about the extent ...

The India-Pakistan conflict was taking a dramatic turn for the worse, pitching the nuclear-armed neighbors into a dangerous spiral of tit-for-tat strikes. Then, out of the blue, US President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US had brokered an end to the fighting. On his Truth Social platform, he made the surprise announcement that India and Pakistan had agreed to ...

It’s a proposal that the Kremlin can neither reject nor accept, but one that may force it into an awkward choice, revealing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s true appetite for his brutal war of choice. Europe’s leaders have grasped the nettle of whether peace talks over Ukraine can lead anywhere meaningful, to force Moscow into a pause in violence, precisely when ...

It comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff warned on Friday that if the next set of talks in Oman on Sunday were not productive, “then they won’t continue and we’ll have to take a different route.” “The United States will ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, but also wishes for lasting peace in the Middle East, a ...