By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV named a new archbishop of Westminster on Friday in another high-profile appointment that signals a generational shift in the English-speaking Catholic hierarchy. Leo tapped Bishop Richard Moth, 67, to replace the retiring ...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's government and its allies on Friday welcomed the final lifting of the most draconian sanctions imposed on the country in recent decades. The U.S. Congress imposed the so-called Caesar Act sanctions on Syria's government and financial system in 2019 to punish ...

By ROB GILLIES Associated Press TORONTO (AP) — Canada and the U.S. will launch formal discussions to review their free trade agreement in mid-January, the office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said. The prime minister confirmed to provincial leaders that Dominic LeBlanc, the ...

By SAM McNEIL Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders agreed on Friday to provide a massive interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years. The 27-nation bloc's heads of state had planned to use some of the 210 billion euros ...

By BASSEM MROUE and MALAK HARB Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Egypt is doing all it can to prevent further escalation between Lebanon and Israel amid tension between the two neighbors over the disarmament process of the militant Hezbollah group, the country's prime minister said Friday ...

By SAM McNEIL and ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is delaying a massive free-trade deal with South American countries after fiery protests by farmers and last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the pact, seen by its backers as an ...

By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY, KRISTEN GELINEAU and TRISTAN LAVALETTE Associated Press SYDNEY (AP) — Hundreds of mourners bearing bright bouquets and clutching each other in grief gathered at a funeral in Sydney on Thursday for a 10-year-old girl who was gunned down in an antisemitic massacre ...

By LORNE COOK, SAM McNEIL and ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders stalled early Friday in talks to provide a massive loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets, officials said, as Belgium sought ironclad guarantees from its partners that they would ...

By MAURICIO SAVARESE Associated Press SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's lower house speaker Hugo Motta decided on Thursday to remove two lawmakers close to former President Jair Bolsonaro from their seats in the latest blow to the far-right leader serving a 27-year jail sentence for leading a coup ...

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday approved former Iraqi President Barham Salih as the next head of the U.N. refugee agency, its first from the Middle East since the late 1970s. The 193-member world body elected the ...

By ABBY SEWELL Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — The move by the United States to lift sweeping sanctions on Syria could encourage more refugees to return to their country and also help encourage investments, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Lebanon said Thursday. The U.S. Senate voted ...

By JULIA FRANKEL Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — An attempt by Israeli authorities to write a routine parking ticket in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem turned violent on Thursday as members of the community quickly gathered to protest, attacking and injuring 13 police ...

By JULIA FRANKEL and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — President Donald Trump's Mideast envoy on Friday will host top officials from Middle Eastern countries mediating the Gaza ceasefire, a State Department official said, in a bid to push the tenuous agreement into its next ...

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — For decades, Belgium has been at the beating heart of the European Union. The headquarters of the 27-nation bloc's main institutions and NATO are based there. EU leaders meet in the capital Brussels at least four times a year. But at ...

By BASSEM MROUE Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on southern and northeastern Lebanon on Thursday as a deadline looms to disarm the militant Hezbollah group along the countries' tense frontier. The strikes came a day before a meeting of the ...

By LORNE COOK, SAM McNEIL and ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium insisted on Thursday that its European Union partners must provide ironclad guarantees that it will be protected from Russian retaliation before it would back a massive loan for Ukraine. Ukrainian ...

By RAJESH ROY Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — India signed a comprehensive economic partnership agreement with Oman on Thursday as part of its broader strategy to offset the impact of steep U.S. import tariffs and widen export destinations during growing global trade uncertainties. This ...

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday made his most important U.S. appointment to date, naming a fellow Chicagoan as the next archbishop of New York to lead one of the biggest U.S. archdioceses as it navigates relations with the Trump ...

By JIM GOMEZ Associated Press MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The southern Philippines once drew small numbers of foreign militants aligned with al-Qaida or the Islamic State group to train in a secessionist conflict involving minority Muslims in the largely Catholic nation. That backdrop ...

By FARAI MUTSAKA Associated Press HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Africa has been the hardest hit by the Trump administration's decision to add 20 countries to a list of travel restrictions but reactions on the continent of some 1.5 billion people were largely muted on Wednesday as affected ...