Syria’s president issued a decree granting amnesty and reducing sentences for several categories of crime committed prior to Thursday, his office and state media reported.No reason was given for the amnesty but it came on the anniversary of the 1970 coup that brought the father and predecessor of President Bashar…

A fire erupted in a coal mining company building in a northern Chinese city on Thursday, killing 26 people and injuring at least 38, Chinese state media reported.Rescue personnel evacuated dozens of people from the building, according to state media.The building belongs to Yongju Coal Company and is in Lvliang…

Polling stations closed and the counting of votes began Thursday in Madagascar in a presidential election that was boycotted by the majority of candidates following weeks of unrest and court battles.A low voter turnout marked the election, as many people appeared to heed a call by a collective of 10…

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was re-elected by Parliament on Thursday, winning the votes of 179 of a possible 350 lawmakers.Sánchez’s victory immediately follows his leveraging of an amnesty deal with Catalan separatists in order to secure votes from the region’s representatives in Madrid.Oriol Bartomeus, professor of political science of…

The U.N. special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territory claimed this week that Israel does not have a right to self-defense against Hamas under international law and accused the country of committing “war crimes.”The comments from Francesca Albanese came Tuesday during an address to the National Press Club of Australia,…

Officials in Iceland reportedly have sent a large bulldozer to a region under threat of a volcanic eruption to dig massive ditches in hopes of diverting any potential lava flow away from key structures in the area. The bulldozer, described as a Caterpillar D11, was traveling with a police escort to…

Rescuers in northern India supplied food and medicine to 40 construction workers on Thursday as officials started drilling through the rubble to reach the men who have been trapped since a portion of the tunnel they were working on collapsed over the weekend.Rescuers planned to insert wide steel pipes to…

A Russian artist who replaced supermarket price tags with messages calling for an end to Moscow’s war in Ukraine was jailed for seven years on Thursday for knowingly spreading false information about the Russian army.A court in St Petersburg delivered the verdict hours after the artist, 33-year-old Alexandra Skochilenko, had…

A United Nations committee has passed a resolution condemning North Korean human rights abuses for the 19th year in a row.The Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution Wednesday calling on member nations not to forcibly repatriate political refugees to countries with human rights concerns. The resolution also…

President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping warned President Biden that the Taiwan issue is the most dangerous threat to peace.Biden hosted Xi for a summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, when the two world leaders had a conversation about the greatest issues facing their nations — and…