Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday offered to bring forward a referendum on his presidency to June 2021 from 2022 as he sought to silence mounting criticism from businesses and the opposition of his record in power. In recent days, critics of Lopez Obrador’s management...

Former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden in a video on Tuesday, giving the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a boost from the party’s biggest fundraiser and one of its most popular figures. “I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now,” Obama said...

Authorities in Kabul will ban motorcycles and scooters in the Afghan capital in a bid to control rampant crime and stop assailants on two-wheelers from conducting targeted killings, officials said Tuesday. The ban, which takes effect Wednesday, comes after a string of assaults by armed men...

The number of new cases of COVID-19 is easing in some parts of Europe, including Italy and Spain, but outbreaks are still growing in Britain and Turkey, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. “The overall world outbreak, 90 percent of cases are coming from Europe and the...

Every day, a team of public health officials turns up in the White House briefing room to lay out measures being taken to contain the coronavirus pandemic. A different team, expected to be formally announced as early as Tuesday, has begun meeting behind closed doors in the West Wing to tackle...

Forest fires raged Tuesday in the contaminated area near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but officials insisted there is no radiation threat. Hundreds of firefighters backed by aircraft have been battling several forest fires around Chernobyl since last week. They managed to contain the...

In a live televised address early on Tuesday morning, India's prime minister extended the nationwide lockdown until May 3 to contain novel coronavirus pandemic. Narendra Modi assured that in the second phase of the lockdown, certain services would be relaxed somewhat in certain areas....

 China has approved early-stage human tests for two experimental vaccines to combat the new coronavirus as it battles to contain imported cases, especially from neighbouring Russia, the new “front line” in the war on COVID-19. Russia has become China’s largest source of imported cases,...

A barrage of North Korean missiles fired from both the ground and fighter jets splashed down on the waters off the country's east coast Tuesday, South Korea’s military said, a major show of force on the eve of a key state anniversary in the North and parliamentary elections in rival South...

Measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus can only be lifted slowly, if the right public health measures are in place, including significant capacity for contact tracing, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday. “While COVID-19 accelerates very fast, it decelerates...

China’s northeastern border with Russia has become a frontline in the fight against a resurgence of the coronavirus epidemic as new daily cases rose to the highest in nearly six weeks - with more than 90% involving people coming from abroad. Having largely stamped out domestic transmission...

The coronavirus outbreak could reach its peak in the United States this week, a top U.S. health official said Monday as more signs of stabilization emerged, but political leaders said a reopening of the economy may hinge on more widespread testing. The United States, with the world's...

Key industries are warning of social unrest unless India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes concessions when he announces any extension Tuesday to a three-week pandemic-lockdown for the country's 1.3 billion people. The lockdown ends at midnight Tuesday, but several state chief ministers...

President Donald Trump's record-setting fundraising pace slowed slightly amid the coronavirus outbreak but remained strong as he maintains a massive cash advantage over Democrats. The Trump reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee raised more than $212 million in the first...

With blunt warnings, flip-charts and daily online briefings, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has been delivering a tough message to the Japanese capital’s residents and shops: stay home and shut down to avert an explosive outbreak of the coronavirus. Koike, 67, was once floated as a future...

The US special envoy who negotiated a deal with the Taliban said Monday that an initial prisoner exchange between the insurgents and the Afghan government was an "important step" toward peace. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Taliban on Sunday released 20...

As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and...

By the time President Donald Trump first spoke publicly about the coronavirus, it may already have been too late. Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on Jan. 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just...

North Korea called for tougher and more thorough countermeasures to keep citizens safe from the fast-spreading coronavirus at a meeting where leader Kim Jong Un presided, state media said on Sunday. North Korea continues testing for the virus, with more than 500 people in quarantine, but...

The Taliban announced Sunday it will be releasing 20 Afghan government prisoners the group has been holding, in the first phase of its commitment under its historic peace deal with the United States. The deal calls for the government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000...