United States International News in English

FILE - To Lam delivers a speech after the Vietnamese Central Committee of the Communist Party elected him as general secretary on Aug. 3, 2024, in Hanoi. Vietnam's media restructuring has become more severe under To Lam, analysts say. FILE - Viewers watch state-run Vietnam Television on Aug. 3, 2017. Under media restructuring in 2025, Vietnam Television will be the sole national TV channel. The website homepage of Z News on Jan. 23, 2025.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, meets with India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the State Department, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington.

Tel Aviv — Testing the bounds of a fragile ceasefire in its fifth day, Israel's military said Thursday that forces had opened fire in the southern Gaza Strip on masked, armed suspects who posed a threat to their safety. The Israel Defense Forces, in a statement, reported incidents east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and in the area of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, through which aid trucks have been delivering more food, water and medical supplies since the ceasefire took effect. 

Israel says it has killed thousands of the armed group’s members and destroyed much of its infrastructure, but since the cease-fire started Hamas has shown it still holds power in the enclave.

A China Coast Guard ship (R) deploying water cannon at the Phillipine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources vessel BRP Datu Pagbuaya (L) near Scarborough Shoal in disputed waters of the South China Sea, Dec. 4, 2024. (National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea/Handout)

Hundreds of LGBTQ couples in Thailand got married Thursday as the country's landmark marriage equality law came into effect. Thailand is the first country or region in South East Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and the third in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal.

Yemen President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington.

South Korea's impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol attends the fourth hearing of his impeachment trial over his short-lived imposition of martial law at the Constitutional Court in Seoul on Jan. 23, 2025.

Gabon

The flags of China and Afghanistan's Taliban are displayed during a news conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 5, 2023. A gun attack claimed by an Islamic State affiliate killed a Chinese national in northeast Afghanistan, the Taliban announced on Jan. 22, 2025.

Rescuers help elderly residents leave their damaged home after a missile attack in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Jan. 23, 2025.

FILE - In this photo provided by the South Korean Defense Ministry, Chinese fishing boats are seen in neutral waters around Ganghwa island, South Korea, June 10, 2016. Chinese structures and buildings at the man-made island on Mischief Reef at the Spratlys group of islands in the South China Sea are seen on March 20, 2022.

A man holds a picture of Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi as protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, participate in a rally to show support to Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen Oct. 25, 2024. A Houthi supporter raises his dagger during an anti-U.S and Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, Jan. 17, 2025. Israeli bomb squad police officers remove part of a missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels after it hit a house in the Israeli village of Mevo Beitar, near Jerusalem, on Jan. 14, 2025. FILE - Oil tanks burn at the port in Hodeidah, Yemen, July 20, 2024. The Israeli army said it has struck several Houthi targets in western Yemen following a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv the previous day.

FILE - Wind turbines spin at the Klettwitz Nord solar energy park near Klettwitz, Germany, Oct. 15, 2024. FILE - The Jaenschwalde coal-fired power plant operates in Jaenschwalde, Germany, Oct. 16, 2024.

Russian soldiers stand at a radar facility on the Alexandra Land island near Nagurskoye, Russia, May 17, 2021. The facility is Russia's northernmost military outpost. FILE - A view of Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), a U.S. base in Greenland, Oct. 4, 2023.

Rescue personnel transport a survivor from the site of a landslide triggered by heavy rains to a hospital in Mudal village, near Pekalongan city in Central Java, on Jan. 22, 2025.

FILE - Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov enter a hall for talks in Moscow on March 6, 2024. Nigeria on Jan. 17, 2025, became an official partner in the BRICS economic and political bloc, of which Russia is a founding member.

At least 12 train passengers were killed on Wednesday after being hit by another service on an adjacent track in western India after they jumped from their coaches in panic to escape a rumored fire incident, the Press Trust of India reported.

A solitary sunfish at an aquarium in southwestern Japan lost its appetite, began banging into the side of the fish tank and appeared unwell days after the facility closed last month for renovations. As a last-ditch measure to save the popular fish, its keepers hung their uniforms and set up human cutouts outside the tank.

FILE - Trucks loaded with aid wait to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Jan. 19, 2025. Displaced Palestinians inspect the ruins of their home, which was destroyed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a day after the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect, Jan. 20, 2025.

Thabang Kopelo led a protest advocating for the employment of local teachers in Gaborone, Botswana, on Jan. 22, 2025.

FILE - Afghan refugees hold placards in Islamabad, Pakistan, July 21, 2023. Thousands of Afghans are still waiting to be relocated to the United States.

FILE - Prince Harry and attorney David Sherborne leave Britain's High Court in London on June 7, 2023. Sherborne read a statement in court on Jan. 22, 2025, saying Rupert Murdoch's News Group offers a "full and unequivocal apology" for unlawful intrusion on Harry's privacy. Former British lawmaker Tom Watson speaks outside the High Court in London on Jan. 22, 2025, about News Group's settlement regarding allegations of unlawful information gathering. Rupert Murdoch arrives in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington before the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025. FILE - Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive at United Nations headquarters in New York on July 18, 2022.

London — A 26-year-old man pleaded guilty Wednesday to the murder of a mother and two of her daughters at their family home just north of London last year, in an attack that involved a crossbow and a knife. Prosecutors said Kyle Clifford killed his 25-year-old ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt and her 28-year-old sister Hannah Hunt with a crossbow before stabbing their mother, Carol Hunt, 61, to death on July 9.

“It took us a few minutes to accept that this pile of rubble was our home,” said Islam Dahliz, whose family was ordered by Israeli forces to evacuate Rafah in May.

Police in Greece said Wednesday they were investigating how an ancient Greek statue came to be dumped in a black plastic bag near garbage cans in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids offered a “full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex” for years of unlawful intrusion.

FILE - A man clears the rubble in front of St. Andrew's Cathedral which was damaged by a Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Jan 18, 2025.

FILE - Afghan refugees deported from Pakistan wait to receive food aid by Red Cross Society in Kandahar on Jan. 24, 2024 FILE - Afghan refugees wait to register in a camp near the Torkham Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham, Afghanistan, Nov. 4, 2023.

IDF Chief Herzi Halevi announced his resignation, citing responsibility for Oct. 7 attack failures. His departure intensifies calls for accountability, placing pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu.

FILE - People wait in line for the opening of a polling office during the presidential election in Libreville, Gabon, Aug. 26, 2023. Soon after the election, longtime President Ali Bongo Ondimba was ousted by a coup. FILE - Transitional President of Gabon Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 26, 2024, at U.N. headquarters.

Firefighters and emergency teams work on the aftermath of a fire that broke out at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Jan. 22, 2025.

Three girls were killed and 10 people were wounded during an attack in England last summer.

FILE - Kurdish journalists protest in Diyarbakir, Turkey, Dec. 4, 2023.

FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, listen to the media in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. Trump said on Tuesday he would likely impose sanctions on Russia if Putin refuses to negotiate about ending the war in Ukraine. 

FILE - A health worker administers a cervical cancer vaccine HPV Gardasil to a girl on the street in Ibadan, Nigeria, on May 27, 2024. More than half of Africa's 54 nations – 28 – have introduced the vaccine in their immunization programs.

Drug traffickers whose entire organized crime ring was brought down by a photo of a French Bulldog were ordered to fork over more than $1.4 million, the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency said. 

President Donald Trump signs an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the Oval Office of the White House, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington.

FILE - Activists commiserate in Nairobi on May 24, 2019, after the Kenyan High Court upheld laws criminalizing same-sex relations. Reactions in Africa to U.S. President Donald Trump's Jan. 20, 2025, executive orders regarding LGBTQ people ranged from "excited" to defiant.

An Israeli military operation in a built-up refugee camp in the occupied West Bank killed at least seven people Tuesday, according to Palestinian health officials, as the Israel Defense Forces announced a new "large scale" offensive in the area on the third day of a ceasefire in the smaller Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military killed at least seven Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday as the prime minister announced the start of a “large-scale military operation” in the restive city of Jenin.

The announcement came shortly after President Trump rescinded Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settlers and Jewish extremists raided Palestinian villages in protest against the cease-fire in Gaza.

FILE - Indonesia's Foreign Minister Sugiono arrives at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, Oct. 24, 2024. FILE - Security agents walk with sniffer dogs as they check the United Nations Security Council hall before a meeting to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, at the U.N. headquarters in New York, Aug. 3, 2024.

FILE - Marco Rubio testifies before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of State, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Jan. 15, 2025.

More than 30 hostages are set to be released during the cease-fire in Gaza. But many Israelis have mixed feelings about the deal because they feel it came at a high price.

Two men admitted on Monday to the brutal 2003 murder of a Frenchman when they appeared in court after more than two decades on the run.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has announced the release of two Americans in a prisoner exchange.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya in Bolu, Turkey, Jan. 21, 2025. Ihlas News Agency (IHA) via REUTERS

Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners to cheering crowds in the West Bank after Hamas returned three hostages that were being held in Gaza.

Protesters demand further investigation as they suspect more people were involved in the crime, after a court sentenced Sanjay Roy, a police volunteer, to life in prison in the rape and killing of trainee doctor last year, in Kolkata, India, Jan. 20, 2025.