Anti-lockdown protests have widened in China after a deadly fire

The U.S. State Department says Secretary Antony Blinken has postponed his trip to Beijing amid concerns about a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over U.S. airspace. The Pentagon said Thursday it had "very high confidence" that the high-altitude surveillance balloon came from China and is being used to collect information from sensitive sites.

BEIJING — China said Friday it is looking into reports that a Chinese spy balloon has been flying in U.S. airspace and urged calm, adding that it has "no intention of violating the territory and airspace of any sovereign country." Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning also said she had...

MANILA, Philippines — The U.S. will expand its presence in Southeast Asia with access to more bases in the Philippines, the two countries announced Thursday. "American commitment to the defense of the Philippines is ironclad. Our alliance makes both of our democracies more secure and helps uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific," U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said during a press conference on Thursday afternoon in Manila.

The film Let It Be Morning centers on the story of Sami, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who thinks he's made it, working at a tech company in Jerusalem, living a double life with his Jewish Israeli mistress. But when he heads to his family's village for a wedding he...

LAGOS, Nigeria — Pope Francis has arrived in South Sudan, on the second leg of a trip to Africa he has called "a pilgrimage of peace." South Sudan is the world's youngest country with a large Catholic population, and has suffered violent conflict since the end of its civil war. The pope hopes his visit can revive its peace process.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, choreographer Alexei Ratmansky was in Moscow working with both the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky, historically two of the most revered ballet companies in the world. "My wife called me at 5:00 am from New York and said: Kyiv has been bombed," he remembers. He and his...

LONDON — Energy giant Shell has reported its highest annual profits in the company's 115-year history, after energy prices soared due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. London-based Shell's profits for 2022 were almost $40 billion, twice those reported for 2021, at a time of continued political debate about more targeted taxation on energy companies.

As infighting continues in the Biden administration over the future of TikTok, the video streaming giant is marshaling its resources toward one goal: convincing the public it is a safe platform. The company recently launched a full-fledged charm offensive that has included rapid-fire meetings in Washington with TikTok CEO Shou...

NEW DELHI — On Wednesday, Indian businessman Gautam Adani lost the title of Asia's richest man. In early January, not only was he the richest in Asia, he was the third-richest in the world and just a few billion shy of Elon Musk. But in the past week, Adani has dropped several places on lists of the world's wealthiest people kept by Forbes and Bloomberg. In a short span of less than 10 days, his personal fortunes have plummeted by close to $50 billion while his firms hemorrhaged around $100 billion in market value.

Russia and Ukraine are waging a fierce fight in the sky. Russia unleashes drones and missiles. Ukraine often shoots them down with its own missiles, and carries out its own drone strikes. Yet one thing makes this battle distinctive from all previous air wars of the past century: pilots are...

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia is removing the British monarchy from its bank notes. The nation's central bank said Thursday its new $5 bill would feature an Indigenous design rather than an image of King Charles III. But the king is still expected to appear on coins. The bank said...

LAGOS, Nigeria — An estimated million people attended an open mass by Pope Francis in Kinshasa on the second day of a landmark trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. A sea of people sang "viva papa," as Pope Francis arrived in his pope mobile, to an open Mass he held at the main airport in the capital Kinshasa.

Close to a year since the invasion of Ukraine, activists aligned with Russia are pushing pro-Kremlin messages in Africa using a coordinated French-language network spanning Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and other online channels. The network, dubbed "Russosphere," is connected to a far-right Belgian political activist who was involved in overseeing contested...

KYIV — Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov says he's optimistic Western allies will eventually supply his country with advanced fighter jets, including U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, and adds that Ukrainian forces are poised to start training on newly committed advanced battle tanks "as soon as possible." "What is impossible...

KYIV — A human rights group says it has documented "numerous cases" of Ukrainian forces firing land mines into territory that was controlled at the time by Russia. In a new report, Human Rights Watch suggests that Ukraine scattered so-called petal mines in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium. Petal mines are prohibited under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, of which Ukraine is a signatory, because of their ability to indiscriminately maim and kill.