The World: Latest Stories

From dog painters to elephant orchestras, can creatures really be creative?

Crazy or brilliant? Jazz legend Charles Mingus came up with a method for toilet training his cat, so we tried it out on a kitty named Dizzy.

Trust the man. He’s photographed 15,000 dogs.

Here's what it took to get a cute, slobbery dog to play the tough guy in the Hungarian film "White God."

The celebrated Soviet dog launched into space in 1957 … and never came home.

Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson performs concerts for the most loyal fans of all — dogs.

“My parents told me that he killed his brother, so I was scared of him,” says 11-year-old Chung Ye-in. “I thought he was a bad person, but after seeing him, I think he looks friendly.”

Karolina lives in Boston but grew up in several countries and speaks a bunch of languages. Her English is perfect but she doesn’t feel completely at home in it, or in American culture. Welcome to the world of third culture kids, a fast-growing group of people who fit in everywhere and nowhere.

When an anti-LGBTQ candidate won the first round of presidential elections in Costa Rica, Vincenzo Bruno took to Facebook to denounce him.

For years, Egyptian women of all ages have felt pressure to straighten their naturally curly hair. But now, a group of women have said enough is enough. Through an online campaign, they're trying to get Egyptian women to embrace their curls.

Israeli forces killed 60 Palestinians on Monday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and injured more than 2,200 by gunfire or tear gas. The violence continued Tuesday as Israeli forces killed one man, while thousands of Palestinians turned out for funerals.

It's Groundhog Day on Cape Cod again. There's a shortage of summer workers, due at least in part to changes in the H-2B visa program, which allows American businesses to hire temporary, seasonal workers from overseas.

Romilly Cavanaugh once worked as an environmental pipeline engineer for Trans Mountain, a unit of Kinder Morgan that’s now trying to expand a Canadian tar sands oil pipeline. But in March she joined 200 protestors trying to block pipeline construction. She now awaits trial for criminal contempt of court.

Many environmental activists join rallies or marches, sign petitions and lobby legislators. But some feel the need for more drastic steps. In October 2016, five activists known as the “valve turners” halted the flow of crude oil through four different pipelines along the US-Canada border, knowing they would be arrested and possibly convicted.

If you haven’t heard, Mother’s Day is this weekend.

RT wants "to create chaos by suggesting there is no such thing as objective truth, rather there are simply dozens of competing narratives.”

The choice of Singapore as the site of the first-ever meeting of a sitting US president and a North Korean leader was as much because it was within reasonable flight time and distance from Pyongyang as because of the island state’s political neutrality.

An unsentimental look at motherhood in the animal kingdom.

When it comes to the intricacies of pregnancy, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction.

Finding inspiration in a poem.

“One Day at a Time” showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett shares some of her favorite TV moms from classic sitcoms.

When Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear agreement, it cut a major diplomatic channel to Iran: Diplomats from Europe, China, Russia, the US and Iran would meet every three months. Family members of American citizens imprisoned in Iran viewed these quarterly meetings as a chance for their loved ones to be discussed and possibly freed.

Arab governments are fighting over an island paradise in the Indian Ocean that few people have seen. Socotra, the size and shape of Long Island, New York, is home to 60,000 people and some of the strangest-looking plants on Earth.

Dr. Baseer Qazi talks about trying to diagnose and treat refugees who have been through traumatic experiences.

Vlogger Shadi Abu Zeid was neither taken to a local police department nor charged in a civilian court. His whereabouts remained unknown for more than a day, until Monday evening, when his sister posted online that he had appeared at a state security prosecutor’s hearing in Cairo.

The end of Temporary Protected Status for many immigrants threatens the university’s support staff — and many of the campus’s more active union members.

Alina Simone was born in the Soviet Union to Russian-speaking parents. She has given up on passing the language on to her daughter.

The president of Mexico told people deported from the US, “You’re not alone.” But Omar Blas Olvera felt alone trying to restart his life and put his family back together in Mexico.

Since 2012, a small network of citizen activists have been risking their lives to secretly film the impact of Myanmar's military campaign against the Rohingyas. Their harrowing footage, and the first-ever on-camera interview with a member of the network, are featured in the new FRONTLINE documentary, "Myanmar’s Killing Fields."

US President Donald Trump will announce on Tuesday whether he will pull out of the Iran nuclear deal or stay in and work with European allies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was sworn in to a fourth term in office on Monday, extending his 18-year rule amid promises of continuity in foreign policy and renewed efforts toward building prosperity at home.

With cancer rates increasing more than 10 percent faster in Keralta, India, than in the rest of the country, the urgency to become agriculturally self-sufficient and chemical-free has started to grow.

The country’s tourism council paints an image of a real-life Shangri-La. But Bhutanese identity has been undergoing a seismic shift as it is thrust into a modern age, prompting a mental health crisis in a country that is struggling to keep up.

Konstantin Rykov started his career creating sites like idiot.ru and spreading sexualized photos of women on the internet. He ended up teaching the Kremlin how to move the internet in its favor.

The Italian establishment has failed from the start to understand the appeal of Five Star. First, it ignored the movement’s mass rallies, then dismissed its electoral aspirations, branding it by turns fascist and communist. Instead of trying to understand Five Star’s growing popularity, the main parties labeled its candidates dilettantes lacking the experience and competence to govern.

Large cities like San Francisco and New York, along with smaller cities and counties in California, want the big oil companies to pay for the harm their products have caused in the form of rising seas, floods and drought. Better science and clear evidence of deception give these lawsuits far more traction than in the past.

Most dog owners don’t think to pick up after their pets when out hiking in the backcountry, assuming it’s no big deal. But all that dog poop adds up to potential harm by introducing foreign bacteria and nutrients to forests, fields and streams.

Once a major polluter becomes subject to the most-stringent regulations, it is always subject to the most stringent regulations, in perpetuity. Now, however, the EPA is rolling back the "once in always in" policy, and environmental activists are alarmed.

Khalida Popal did not let the harassment by the Taliban stop her from playing soccer. But daily death threats left her no choice — she fled her homeland and ended up in Denmark. Today she prepares a team of Mexican teenagers who will compete in the upcoming Street Child World Cup.

Search and rescue workers in Syria say civilian lives are at risk after being hit by a freeze in US funding for their organization. The Trump administration says it's part of a broader cut in aid to Syria and is calling on partners and allies to assume a larger role in stabilizing the country.

The Swedish Academy which decides the Nobel Prize for Literature said on Friday it would not make the award this year because of a sexual misconduct scandal that has caused turmoil in its ranks and led to a string of board members stepping down.

Boston artist Bren Bataclan often gives away his paintings with a note asking people to "smile at random people more often."

The role of race in role playing.

How Brendan Baker and Chloe Prasinos created a sound-rich world for Marvel’s “Wolverine: The Long Night.”

It might seem like a historical footnote, but China's Boxer Rebellion is as strange and tragic as anything in fiction.

High Point, North Carolina: The home to the world's largest home furnishings show is drawing a lot of international visitors.

Journalist Ronan Farrow takes a hard look at the decline of American diplomacy in his new book, “War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence.”

For more than a century, North Carolina and southern Virginia were the furniture-making centers of America. Foreign competition from Asia has taken most of that work away over — 60 percent of the jobs have disappeared since 1990. But North Carolina isn’t going down without a fight.

After weeks of travel across Mexico by bus, freight train and foot, more than 150 migrants from Central America — part of a caravan that has gained international attention — await their turn to apply for asylum at the Southern US border. Just how does the process work?