AP

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Australian government said young children will be banned from social media next month as scheduled despite a rights advocacy group on Wednesday challenging the world-first legislation in court. The Sydney-based Digital Freedom Project said it had filed a constitutional challenge in the High Court on

By ILLIA NOVIKOV and SAM MCNEIL Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A senior Kremlin official confirmed Wednesday that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is set to visit Moscow next week as efforts to find a consensus on ending the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine pick up speed. But Yuri Ushakov, Russian President

By CHAN HO-HIM and KEN MORITSUGU Associated Press HONG KONG (AP) — A fire spread across seven high-rise apartment buildings in a Hong Kong housing complex, killing 13 people and leaving others still trapped, in the city’s worst blaze in years. Nine people were declared dead at the scene and four others who were sent

By WAFAA SHURAFA, JULIA FRANKEL and SAMY MAGDY Associated Press KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel handed over the bodies of 15 Palestinians on Wednesday, a day after Hamas returned the remains of an Israeli hostage. This is the latest swap as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire reached last month, whose first phase is

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip, a pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon that would be delicate under any circumstances but is even more fraught given Mideast tensions and the media glare that will document history’s first American pope on the road. Leo

By JAMES BROOKS Associated Press NORTH SEA, Denmark (AP) — Appearing first as a dot on the horizon, the remote Nini oil field on Europe’s rugged North Sea slowly comes into view from a helicopter. Used to extract fossil fuels, the field is now getting a second lease on life as a means of permanently

TAIJING WU and HUIZHONG WU Associated Press TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday announced a special $40 billion budget for arms purchases, including to build a Taiwan Dome, an air defense system with high-level detection and interception capabilities, as the U.S. pressures the island to increase its defense spending. The budget

By PAN PYLAS and JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Britain’s unpopular center-left Labour government sought to seize the political narrative Wednesday with a tax-raising budget that it hopes will boost economic growth, reduce child poverty and ease cost-of-living pressures. But the chaos that has engulfed the government during weeks of mixed messaging and

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hundreds of women marched through Mexico City’s streets Tuesday to protest violence against women in a country where gender violence remains pervasive. Among the hundreds of marchers clad in purple or with green bandanas, some beat drums and others carried signs. One read: “Today I am the voice of those who

By SHEIKH SAALIQ Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — Hours after police in Indian-controlled Kashmir released shopkeeper Bilal Ahmed Wani but kept his son in custody in this month’s deadly New Delhi blast investigation, Wani set himself on fire, members of his family said. The 55-year-old dry fruit seller was treated at three hospitals but