World

Pakistan and Afghanistan right now are locked in a cycle of escalating tension. Repeated border clashes have strained ties between the two nations.  The current round of tensions began in February 2026, when Pakistan launched strikes into Afghanistan targeting Taliban militants. At one point in March, Pakistan's defense minister said the country was at "open war" with Afghanistan. Periodic bouts of violence have continued since then, with the latest Pakistani strikes targeting the Afghan Taliban's "terrorist hubs" reported earlier in October. At the heart of the dispute is Pakistan's accusation that the Taliban authorities in Kabul allow the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant group, to target Pakistan from Afghan territory. Kabul denies providing the group with sanctuary. Milit...

Britain will deploy Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets to Saudi Arabia to help defend the kingdom against increasing attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels, the UK government announced on Tuesday. The aircraft will protect Saudi cities and critical infrastructure from drones and missiles, the Ministry of Defense said. They will not carry out offensive strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. "The continuing attacks from the Houthis on our ally Saudi Arabia are absolutely despicable," British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said. He particularly condemned attacks on Riyadh's international airport, which has been targeted 20 times since the beginning of October. Riyadh's international airport has seen a string of attacks claimed by the HouthisImage: Social Media/REUTERS Strikes on the airpo...

Thousands of people rallied in Lisbon, Porto and other Portuguese cities on Tuesday evening, hours after police dismantled protest camps and arrested a total of 55 demonstrators. The protesters vowed to continue their campaign against Portugal's deepening housing crisis, which has made buying or renting a home increasingly unaffordable. Organizers said more than 1,000 people gathered in each of the two main protest locations, although police did not provide crowd estimates. Protesters call for affordable housing as soaring property prices put pressure on residents Image: Pedro Nunes/REUTERS In Lisbon's central Rossio square, demonstrators voted by a show of hands to re-establish their tent camp on Wednesday. Police moves to shut down protest camps Police launched coordinated operation...

On July 20, Navkiran Natt and her partner set out for the magistrate's office in New Delhi to get married. They arrived to find a tense situation, with police gathering to break up a youth-led march on Parliament. Office staff — and the couple's wedding witnesses — were running late due to barricades.  The protest movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) had announced the march to demand the resignation of India's then-Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.  The protesters were met with heavy resistance from security forces, who had deployed batons, tear gas and pellet-firing shotguns, leading to injuries and mass detentions. Less than three months later, on October 10, Natt left home early in the morning and spent the day crisscrossing the locked-down Indian capital looking fo...

As the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, nears its end, uncertainty over the future of southern Lebanon is growing. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has warned of the need to "avert the vacuum that UNIFIL's withdrawal could create, were it to take place without agreement on a new international force to replace it." The Lebanese government has also been pushing for a last-minute extension of UNIFIL's mandate, but so far without success. It is most likely that the 7,565 peacekeepers from 46 countries will begin withdrawing from the UN-patrolled so-called Blue Line zone on December 31, 2026.  The Blue Line, which stretches for 120 kilometers (75 miles), is a UN-identified line of withdrawal between Israel and Lebanon, not an internationally agreed border....