A South Korean oil tanker held for months by Iran amid a dispute over billions of dollars seized by Seoul was freed and sailed away early Friday, just hours ahead of further talks between Tehran and world powers over its tattered nuclear deal.
Authorities in Northern Ireland sought to restore calm Thursday after Protestant and Catholic youths in Belfast hurled bricks, fireworks and gasoline bombs at police and each other. It was the worst mayhem in a week of street violence in the region, where Britain's exit from the European Union has unsettled an uneasy political balance.
Police in Sri Lanka on Thursday arrested the reigning Mrs. World for pulling the crown off the head of the winner of a Mrs. Sri Lanka beauty pageant and allegedly causing injuries. She was later released on bail.
Australia said Friday that it has finalized a deal to buy an extra 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine as it rapidly pivots away from its earlier plan to rely mainly on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
China accused the U.S. of causing humanitarian disasters through foreign military interventions in a report Friday that was the latest broadside by Beijing amid increasingly contentious relations with the Biden administration.
Doctors in Japan announced Thursday they have successfully performed the world's first transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a patient with severe lung damage from COVID-19.
Shares fell Friday in most Asian markets after China reported a stronger than expected rise in prices that could prompt authorities to act to cool inflation.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for waging another "arduous march" to fight severe economic difficulties, for the first time comparing them to a 1990s famine that killed hundreds of thousands.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has informed the Security Council that he couldn't provide options to reduce and terminate the nearly 3,700-strong peacekeeping force in the disputed Abyei region on the Sudan-South Sudan border because of differences between the two countries.
The Horn of African country of Djibouti is going to the polls on Friday as President Ismail Omar Guelleh seeks a fifth term in the small but strategically important nation home to military bases for the United States, China and others.
Empty cruise ships were scheduled to arrive Friday at the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent to help transport thousands of people who evacuated their homes under the fiery glow of La Soufriere volcano which officials said could erupt at any moment.
A surging coronavirus pandemic that has brought on new lockdown measures and exacerbated fatigue in Ecuador and Peru has left many voters generally indifferent to the names they will see on the ballots Sunday, when the neighboring South American nations are set to choose new presidents.
Japan is set to strengthen anti-virus measures in Tokyo on Friday to curb the rapid spread of a more contagious coronavirus variant just three months before the Olympics begin in the capital where most people are not yet vaccinated.
Authorities on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent said Thursday they believe an active volcano is in danger of erupting and have ordered mandatory evacuations.
A Louisiana lawmaker has put forward legislation to amend the state's Constitution to abolish forced labor as punishment for those convicted of a crime.
Puerto Rico's health secretary announced Thursday that all public and private schools in the U.S. territory would close for two weeks amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Singapore's designated future leader, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, has taken himself out of the running in a surprise decision, saying in a letter released Thursday that a younger person with a "longer runway" should be the next prime minister.
An information blackout under Myanmar's military junta worsened Thursday as fiber broadband service, the last legal way for ordinary people to access the internet, became intermittently inaccessible on several networks.
A Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered the Senate on Thursday to investigate the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis and the full court ruled that churches can be barred from reopening during the pandemic, threatening to further strain tensions between President Jair Bolsonaro and the judiciary.
Mexican prosecutors say they have detained one of the leaders of the Gulf Cartel, and in a related raid at a different house found a local politician with three guns.
When Andrea Wong reached the field in the Amazon forest, she was confused. There were dozens of crosses planted in the red soil, but nothing to distinguish her father's grave.
Kenya's high court on Thursday suspended the government move to shut down two camps that hold hundreds of thousands of refugees from war-torn neighboring countries.