Astronomers on Tuesday said that the asteroid designated 2024 YR4 had become the most likely sizable space rock ever forecast to impact planet Earth. The object, first detected in December, is 130 to 300 feet long and expected to make a very close pass of the planet in 2032. Its odds of impacting Earth on … Read more
A man in Florida charged with attempted murder in the shooting of two tourists in Miami Beach on Saturday — he told the police he had thought they were Palestinian — is attributing the violence to a “severe” mental health episode. The man, Mordechai Brafman, 27, was driving when he stopped his truck and got … Read more
U.S. and Russia discussed Ukraine, and renewing ties Senior U.S. and Russian officials agreed yesterday not only to work together on ending the war in Ukraine, but also to cooperate on financial investment and re-establishing normal relations. The negotiations were the most extensive in years between the two global powers. The meeting, which took place … Read more
A South African imam who devoted his life to promoting gay rights and tolerance for L.G.B.T.Q. Muslims was shot and killed in the coastal city of Gqeberha on Saturday, the police said. Muhsin Hendricks was credited by some as being the world’s first openly gay imam. In 2018, he founded the Al-Ghurbaah Foundation, a nonprofit … Read more
Nearly 40 years after she was born with a malformed spine and misshapen limbs — most likely because her father was exposed to Agent Orange, the toxic chemical that the American military used during the Vietnam War — Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diem finally got some help from the United States. A project funded by U.S.A.I.D. … Read more
Russia released another American held on drug charges on Monday, in what the Kremlin acknowledged was a good-will gesture on the eve of talks between senior Russian and U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia. The American, Kalob Byers Wayne, 28, was arrested on Feb. 7 at a Moscow airport on charges of carrying a small amount … Read more
Numerous programs aimed at averting violence, instability and extremism worsened by global warming are ensnared in the effort to dismantle the main American aid agency, U.S.A.I.D. One such project helped communities manage water stations in Niger, a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups where conflicts over scarce water are common. Another helped repair water-treatment plants in … Read more
The leaders of many of Europe’s biggest countries came to Paris on Monday in an effort to forge a strategy for their own security, as President Trump’s envoys prepared for talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine without them. The meeting in Paris was pulled together hastily after the first visit to Europe … Read more
Zakia Jafri, who turned her personal loss into an uphill campaign for justice after her husband, Ehsan Jafri, was brutally murdered during sectarian riots in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, died on Feb. 2 at her daughter’s home in Ahmedabad, India. She was 86. Her death was confirmed by her son Tanveer Jafri. … Read more
Pope Francis will remain in a Rome hospital after being admitted late last week following a series of tests that indicated a “complex clinical picture,” the Vatican said on Monday, raising fresh concerns about the 88-year-old pontiff’s health. Diagnostic tests carried out after Francis was taken to Policlinico A. Gemelli on Friday presented “a polymicrobial … Read more