Sri Lanka's top health official has revised down the death toll from the Easter Sunday attacks, while the U.S. Embassy in the island nation's capital warned people to avoid places of worship this weekend because of possible extremist attacks.

U.S. President Donald Trump approved payment of a $2 million US bill presented by North Korea to cover its care of comatose American Otto Warmbier, a college student who died shortly after being returned home from 17 months in a North Korean prison, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

A powerful tropical cyclone made landfall on Thursday in Mozambique, just six weeks after Cyclone Idai devastated the central part of the country and left more than 100 dead in its wake.

One of the hundreds of rare books stolen from a Pittsburgh library in a 20-year scheme has been recovered in the Netherlands.

Hundreds of students and staff at two Los Angeles universities have been placed under quarantine because they may have been exposed to measles.

French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled long-awaited plans to quell five months of yellow vest protests that have damaged his presidency.

Officials say they're searching for 25 possible Venezuelan migrants believed to be missing from a boat that sank in the Caribbean Sea before reaching the nearby island of Trinidad.

About 169 million children worldwide missed out on being vaccinated between 2010 and 2017, according to a UNICEF report.

Kithsiri De Silva, the head chef at Sri Lanka’s venerable Kingsbury Hotel, walked through the main restaurant during breakfast Sunday, greeting diners and surveying the extravagant buffet.

He would have seen, he thinks now with dread, the guest who moments later detonated a suicide bomb in the...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time Thursday in a summit filled with gifts, pleasantries and champagne but few specifics on how to achieve what both men have said they want — denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Kim and Putin met behind...

One poster shows a mother and child in Myanmar holding antimalarial medicine. Another features an insecticide spray operator in Mozambique. A third focuses on a community health worker in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In each case, the images are accompanied by large bold letters reading: “Zero...

Searching for alternatives amid stalled nuclear talks with the U.S., North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his quest for support in the region for the easing of the pressure campaign against North Korea for its nuclear program.

The meeting, the...

On April 13, a Mexican military patrol spotted an unmarked vehicle on the south side of the border fence outside El Paso, and confronted the two people inside.

They turned out to be U.S. Army soldiers, and the spot where they were parked was U.S. territory.

The two sides talked, the Mexican military...

Iran’s top diplomat on Wednesday made public an offer to the U.S. government for a prisoner swap that he said he made six months ago.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the Asia Society that Iran had not received a response from the Trump administration. “If they tell you anything else...

Russia said Wednesday that it will offer citizenship to Ukrainians living in the breakaway territories of the country’s eastern flank, a provocative move that President Vladimir Putin signed into law just three days after Ukraine’s presidential election.

The move angered Kiev, where the issue of...

The family was stunned, grieving — and angry. They had just buried three of their own, an elderly couple and their 11-year-old grandson who were killed in their church pews Easter morning, and they lashed out at the government.

“They destroyed our security,” said Ranjiv Silva, 45, the boy’s father,...

Amid all the debate over whether the Mueller report incriminates or exonerates President Donald Trump, one salient point is being largely overlooked: Russia interfered in the 2016 election to undermine American democracy as a whole. The intent of Russian meddling was to sow discord in the U.S. political system, said special counsel Robert Mueller in his report to the U.S. Justice Department. “I guarantee you that Russia is working on hacking this election right now,” says Seth Moulton, a decorated Marine and Democratic congressman from Massachusetts who entered the presidential race this week on promises to bolster national security and restore America’s moral authority in the world.

President Vladimir Putin flew from his Kremlin control center across seven time zones of Russian territory to play host – on his own home turf – to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Pacific port of Vladivostok on Thursday. With nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea in at least temporary disarray since they broke down in Hanoi two months ago, Mr. Putin sees an opportunity to insert Russia into the peace process for the first time since the Group of Six negotiations on the Korean crisis, of which Russia was a member, fell apart almost a decade ago. President Donald Trump raised expectations with his extraordinary outreach to the North Korean leader, but after the Hanoi debacle it may now seem to Mr. Kim that he needs to gather a few friends into his corner before facing Mr. Trump again.

The speculation over whether or not former Vice President Joe Biden would join the crowded 2020 Democratic primary field officially ended Thursday when he released a video declaring his bid for president. The announcement was almost a formality. From the start of the campaign cycle, the press has treated Mr. Biden – a five-term U.S. senator and popular two-term vice president – as though he were already running.

My 20-something nephew says he saw Justin Williams, the captain of the Carolina Hurricanes hockey club, on a plane on the way home to Raleigh, North Carolina, before this season. On Wednesday, now sporting stubble and a game-day suit, the player known as “Mr. Game 7” laced up in another elimination match-up in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs as his wet-behind-the-ears Hurricanes squad faced the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals, all but three of whom had Game 7 experience. Mr. Williams has more Game 7 points – 15 – than any other player in the history of the game.

Wind speeds of 140mph threatens fresh devastation for country reeling from Cyclone Idai

The strongest cyclone ever to hit Mozambique has made landfall in the country’s north, five weeks after Cyclone Idai devastated its centre, according to meteorologists.

Surpassing both Idai and the 2000 cyclone that had been the strongest to date, Cyclone Kenneth hit Cabo Delgado province with wind speeds of 140mph (225km/h), bringing the threat of extreme rainfall.

President recognises protesters’ demands but vowed to still liberalise the economy

Emmanuel Macron has vowed to make his style of politics more “humane”, but insisted he would press on with his project to liberalise the French economy and overhaul its welfare state despite five months of demonstrations by gilets jaunes (yellow vest) anti-government protesters.

In his first press conference in two years as president, Macron promised €5bn (£4.3bn) worth of cuts to income tax for lower and average earners as well as pension rises for the poorest and vowed no more schools or hospitals would be closed during his presidency, as he responded to protests.

Recent history shows that people with comfortable lives can easily be drawn towards violent extremism

When police and soldiers in Sri Lanka set out on the trail of the attackers who killed more than 350 people in a series of bombings on Easter Sunday, they did not expect to find themselves in Dematagoda, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Colombo.

Within 90 minutes of the attack, as hospitals struggled to cope with the huge number of casualties, the security forces were closing in on a three-storey house with a BMW parked outside.

William tells crowd at Al Noor mosque that New Zealand’s response to shootings set an example

Prince William has delighted a young survivor of the mosque shootings by visiting her in hospital in Auckland.

Alen Alsati, 5, sustained numerous critical injuries in the Christchurch attacks in which 50 people were killed on 15 March. Alsati cannot see, walk, or move properly. She also suffered brain damage, her doctors said, and it is not yet known if it will be permanent.

• Defending champion Stephanie Gilmore loses quarter final
• ‘50-year storm’ waves expected to grow on Friday

Defending champion Stephanie Gilmore has been beaten by Hawaiian Malia Manuel in the quarter-finals of the women Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach.

With a huge swell predicted to build at Bells throughout Friday and Saturday, Manuel switched to a bigger board and claimed a 10.77 points to 8.70 triumph against the seven-time world champion.

Anna Sorokin bankrolled a lavish lifestyle with tens of thousands of dollars swindled from banks, hotels and friends

A New York jury on Thursday convicted an extravagant socialite who bankrolled an implausibly lavish lifestyle with tens of thousands of dollars she swindled from banks, hotels and friends who believed she was a wealthy German heiress.

The Manhattan jury found Anna Sorokin guilty of four counts of theft of services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny following a month-long trial that attracted international attention. She was acquitted of one count of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny. She is to be sentenced 9 May.

LGBT campaigners say Brazilian president’s comments risk inciting hatred

Brazil’s far-right president, the self-declared homophobe Jair Bolsonaro, has been accused of inciting hatred towards LGBT people after declaring the South American country should not become a “gay tourism paradise”.

“If you want to come here and have sex with a woman, go for your life,” Bolsonaro reportedly told journalists in the capital, Brasília. “But we can’t let this place become known as a gay tourism paradise. Brazil can’t be a country of the gay world, of gay tourism. We have families,” Bolsonaro added, according to the Brazilian magazine Exame.

Biden, who handled her testimony before the Senate in 1991, contacted Hill to express ‘regret for what she endured’

Former vice-president Joe Biden, who launched his third campaign for president on Thursday, told Anita Hill he regretted the way he handled her testimony against Clarence Thomas at the 1991 supreme court hearings but she was not “satisfied” by the conversation.

Biden contacted her earlier this month to express his “regret for what she endured” during the hearing, an attempt to reckon with a defining moment from his past that looms over his present bid for the White House.