Reuters

El Nino has officially returned and is likely to yield extreme weather later this year, from tropical cyclones spinning toward vulnerable Pacific islands to heavy rainfall in South America to drought in Australia and in some parts of Asia.

The European Commission proposed on Thursday a new ethics body to set standards of conduct across EU institutions whose image has been tarnished by a cash-for-influence scandal that affected the European Parliament at the end of last year.

Pat Robertson, the televangelist who helped turn Christian conservatives into a potent force in U.S.

Ukrainians abandoned inundated homes on Wednesday as floods crested across the south after the destruction of a huge hydroelectric dam on front lines between Russian and Ukrainian forces, with their presidents trading blame for the disaster.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) temporarily halted flights from the U.S. due to poor visibility. Smoke from wildfires in Canada has blanketed part of America's Eastern Seaboard with thick smog, causing travel and respiratory hazards.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador this week intervened in the increasingly fractious race to succeed him, a move party insiders said was aimed at warding off potential division and protect the commanding political power base he has built.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu will make a previously unannounced visit to Europe next week, four sources briefed on the matter said, and is expected to appear with the Czech president at one event in a diplomatic breakthrough.

Countries are racing to prepare for extreme weather later this year as the world tips into an El Nino -- a natural climate phenomenon that fuels tropical cyclones in the Pacific and boosts rainfall and flood risk in parts of the Americas and elsewhere.

A Syrian national wounded four young children and an adult in a knife attack in a park in the southeastern French town of Annecy on Thursday, police said, and some of the victims were in critical condition.

Spain will appeal to President Emmanuel Macron's ambition to make the European Union a "third pole" in world affairs in its bid to secure vital French backing for a stalled EU trade deal with South America, according to three senior government and diplomatic sources.

A visit by the U.S. Secretary of State to Saudi Arabia drew little Saudi media coverage on Thursday at a time of soured relations despite a U.S.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said on Thursday it was suspending food aid to Ethiopia because its donations were being diverted from people in need.

Clashes erupted after Israeli forces raided the city of Ramallah in the West Bank early on Thursday in what the military said was an operation to demolish the house of a Palestinian accused of a Jerusalem double-bombing last year.

Pope Francis was in good general condition on Thursday morning after his first night in hospital following abdominal surgery, had rested well and the results of the first post-operation tests were good, doctors said.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh protested on Thursday, demanding to be repatriated to Myanmar, so they can leave behind the squalid camps that they have lived in since fleeing a brutal military crackdown in their homeland in 2017.

Forest fires continued to burn across Canada on Thursday as the country endured its worst-ever start to wildfire season, forcing thousands of people from their homes and sending a smoky haze billowing across U.S.

U.S. President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will focus on deepening close economic ties between the United States and Britain when they meet at the White House on Thursday, with Russia's war in Ukraine another big topic for the NATO allies.

Rescue workers are scrambling to save thousands of animals trapped by floodwaters in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson following the destruction of the vast Kakhovka dam some 60 km (37 miles) upstream.

Home affairs ministers from the European Union's 27 member states gathered on Thursday to try get across the line an elusive agreement on how to share out the responsibility of caring for refugees and migrants.

Mines uprooted and dispersed by floodwaters surging downstream from the breached Kakhovka dam across swathes of southern Ukraine could pose a grave danger to civilians for decades to come, the Red Cross said.

The Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN will hold its first-ever joint military exercise in the South China Sea, its chair Indonesia said on Thursday, the latest multilateral security drills at a time of rising tension and uncertainty in the region.

Ousted Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan was on Thursday due to appeal to several courts for bail on a growing list of charges against him in a bid to avert his arrest, which could risk a repeat of violent protests by his supporters.

For more than 15 months Russia has been fighting a war in Ukraine that the Kremlin refused to call a war - but that is changing: President Vladimir Putin is using the word "war" more often.

In peacetime, Viktor Tkachenko tracks local tenders, court registries and other open sources for a news outlet in central Ukraine.

Separatists in the Indonesian region of Papua where a New Zealand pilot was taken hostage in February have been siphoning off government aid money to buy black market guns for a deadly guerrilla war, officials say.

Hundreds of uncontrolled forest fires blazed across Canada on Wednesday, threatening critical infrastructure, forcing evacuations and sending a blanket of smoky air wafting over U.S.

Russia intends to block European Union countries from hosting next year's U.N.

Senior U.S. policy makers took aim at China on Wednesday over its approach to Latin America, accusing Beijing of breaching economic norms and urging it to do more to help combat the illegal fentanyl trade.

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday asked for more time to study a case pitting the country's Indigenous people against its powerful farm sector, a decision that is likely to give lawmakers more time to pass the measure favoring Big Agriculture.