Associated Press

By NICOLE WINFIELD and ANDREW DAMPF Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV has made peace with Jannik Sinner. The top-ranked tennis player visited the new pope on Wednesday, gave him a tennis racket and offered to play, during an off day for Sinner at the Italian Open. Leo, the first American pope,

By FATIMA HUSSEIN and MEGAN JANETSKY Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel Vail’s entire life in the small western Guatemalan town of Cajolá is built off the money that his three children send home from the United States. The money from their construction jobs paid for the two-story white home where Vail now lives —

By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Three New Zealand lawmakers from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori Party, will receive temporary bans from Parliament and severe censure, it was announced Wednesday, over their protest of a proposed law by performing a haka, a chanting dance of challenge, directed at their opponents. A

By WAFAA SHURAFA and MELANIE LIDMAN Associated Press DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “no way” he would

By ZEKE MILLER, JON GAMBRELL and AAMER MADHANI Associated Press RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump met with interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the first encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years and one that could mark a turning point for Syria as it struggles

By DASHA LITVINOVA A court in Moscow on Wednesday convicted one of the leaders of a prominent independent election monitoring group on charges of organizing the work of an “undesirable” organization and sentenced him to five years in prison. Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia’s leading election watchdog Golos, has rejected the charges as politically motivated.

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV vowed to take “every effort” Wednesday to work for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine and to actively promote the spirituality and traditions of the eastern rite churches, those Catholic communities with origins in the Mideast and eastern Europe that have been

By JUSTIN SPIKE Associated Press BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The nationalist party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán introduced a bill late Tuesday that would allow the government to monitor, restrict, penalize and potentially ban organizations it deems a threat to national sovereignty, marking a significant escalation of the government’s long-running crackdown on critical media

By GABE LEVIN Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Scores of laborers from countries including India, Bangladesh and Nepal have faced preventable deaths from electrocution, road accidents, falling from heights, and more while working in Saudi Arabia, according to a report Wednesday by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch and

By The Associated Press President Donald Trump arrived Wednesday in Qatar, where he was greeted by the country’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani, as he kicked off the second leg of his three-nation Middle East tour this week. In a stunning engagement earlier in the day in Saudi Arabia, Trump met with Syria’s new

By ZEKE MILLER, JON GAMBRELL and AAMER MADHANI Associated Press RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — President Donald Trump told Gulf leaders on Wednesday he urgently wants “to make a deal” with Iran to wind down its nuclear program but Tehran must end its support of proxy groups throughout the region as part of any potential