The World: Latest Stories

We used to be the hare, but now we may be the tortoise.

The Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are poised to become one of the first blocs to reopen regional travel, thanks to their swift response to the pandemic and measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Migrant farmworkers tend to work low-paying jobs. Few, if any, have benefits, and many are undocumented. These factors make them "uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic," says Marc Grossman of United Farm Workers of America.

Brayan Guevara, a 19-year-old Afro Latino from Greensboro, North Carolina, had never visited Honduras, where many of his relatives live. His first trip there last summer made him proud of his heritage — and that's shaping how he'll vote in the US presidential election this November.

Yoel Roth, head of site integrity at Twitter, and Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, have been working together to tackle disinformation during the pandemic.

Some scientists and researchers say that its success in staving off COVID-19 is directly related to its history of fighting zoonotic diseases.

Founded in 1985, Studio Ghibli became the heavyweight champion of anime in Japan and the rest of the world. One of its anime producers has uploaded a video tutorial explaining how to draw Totoro from the popular 1988 film "My Neighbor Totoro."

Shanghai’s Disneyland became the first Disney amusement park to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, sending a strong signal of recovery in Shanghai. But it was not back to normal.

Former US Ambassador Jon Huntsman speaks with The World’s Marco Werman about the deterioration of relations between China and the US.

The coronavirus pandemic has been compared to the Great Depression and the Second World War, in terms of the threat it poses to democracy. Geopolitical risk analyst Ian Bremmer doesn’t think the crisis will usher in a new world order, but he believes it will intensify and speed up trends that many have worried about for years.

The government is taking a phased approach to the lockdown, easing restrictions only on areas that haven’t seen infections for a month. That’s despite the fact that India recently saw a spike in cases of the coronavirus, and projections show they still have not peaked.

Airlines have gone from raking it in to now losing tens of million dollars a day. Among all of the unknowns the pandemic has wrought, the future of airline travel is a significant question.

New Zealand is “halfway down Everest,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said of the country’s battle with the coronavirus. New Zealand, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway all have notably low rates of fatalities and Germany stands out in central Europe for its low death rate. The seven countries have something else in common: All are led by women. Is it a coincidence or are women leaders better at managing the coronavirus?

A key part of "doughnut" economic thinking is no longer using the gross domestic product as a proxy for society’s success.

At one new pop-up restaurant in Sweden, social distancing is exceedingly easy — in fact, it’s the goal.

Yemen has a population of nearly 30 million. Fewer than 1,000 have been tested for COVID-19. An emergency room doctor explains how he treats patients for the novel coronavirus without the tools and equipment to make diagnoses — or protect himself.

Reaching rural populations is one of the biggest challenges to achieving widespread testing in Africa. About 60% of sub-Saharan Africa is rural.

Some prominent Catholics are criticizing Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic — and many have been vocal on Twitter.

Flower producers and sellers have seen an uptick in demand due to Mother's Day. But it won't be enough to save the industry from the steep drop in business due to the pandemic.

Last week, a group of young Afghans tried to enter Iran in search of work. Iranian officials reportedly arrested them and forced them to return to Afghanistan through a nearby river. Most of them drowned.

Russia expert and former presidential adviser Fiona Hill speaks with The World's Marco Werman about US-Russia relations and the state of Russia's politics ahead of Victory Day celebrations.

Scottish virologist June Almeida was a pioneer of virus imaging. But she also played a pivotal role to identify the first human coronavirus — the same type of virus with tiny spokes as SARS and SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19.

Lebanese protesters are back in the streets with increasing desperation as the country sinks.

With the Mexican infection curve several weeks behind the US epidemic, experts say Mexican workers are right to be concerned about returning too quickly. Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador, explains what US pressure to reopen American factories means for Mexican workers and the country's economy.

Many people who identify as LGBTQ are experiencing lockdown differently than their heterosexual peers — especially those stuck in homophobic homes. And LGBTQ organizations around the world are seeing significant upticks in calls for help.

Is there any other sizable country that has so thoroughly vanquished COVID-19 — and without the resources of a wealthy nation?

The US-China relationship is on course for a "prolonged rivalry," Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies tells The World.

The pandemic’s deadly grip has sparked a global race to understand how the virus is evolving and spreading — and the clues are in its genetic code. A worldwide network of scientists is trying to map and understand the genomic makeup of the new coronavirus in near real time.

Food banks closed, and people lost jobs across the country after the lockdown. Families began to starve, and activists mobilized to find new ways to help.

All over the world, the scientific community is feeling the impact of the coronavirus, both in the field and in the laboratory. In some cases, research has been paused or discontinued. For some, it means changing plans — staying put instead of going abroad, or not being able to return home.

High Park is the latest outdoor space to close since Canada declared a state of emergency and asked people to stay home because of the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the Canadian great outdoors is off-limits to the public — including hiking trails, campgrounds and national parks.

For years, human rights groups have been sounding the alarm about civilian harm caused by counterterrorism operations in Somalia.

Puratos Center for Bread Flavor, located in the Belgian village of St. Vith, is home to the world’s most extensive collection of sourdough starters.

Last October, Iraqis poured to the streets in several major cities and demanded changes in their government — until the arrival of COVID-19 forced them to pause their protests. Now, they're regrouping.

The coronavirus is shaping how a young Latina voter in California sees the 2020 presidential election. She’s on track to be the first person in her family to attend college this fall, but how will she pay for it? How will her uninsured family members access health care? And when will her mother’s unemployment benefits start coming?

For the past six weeks, three musician roommates in Barcelona, Spain, have been getting people through their confinement blues through originally written songs about the pandemic.

Since 2011, a mountain pass in central Norway has seen unusually warm summers linked to climate change. The melt has revealed an unexpected treasure trove of more than 1,000 remarkably preserved artifacts.

For the rest of the world, it's "shocking" to see the US "so inert" when it comes to its leadership on the coronavirus pandemic, former US Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns tells The World's host Marco Werman.

In normal times, millions of small financial transactions take place daily worldwide when immigrants wire a portion of their earnings to loved ones back home. This year, the economic crisis is wrecking that cash flow.

Despite the box office slump during the pandemic, South Korea’s drive-in theaters have experienced a recent surge in customers.

So many rules about preventing the spread of the coronavirus warn against touching other people. What kind of effect does this lack of human touch have on people?

Today, thanks to the internet, we’re not so alone during our lives in lockdown. Numerous international art projects are harnessing the crowdsourcing power of the internet to curate art about life in quarantine.

Denmark’s opening of schools faster than most others in this time of COVID-19 has not been welcomed by all. Many parents refuse to send their children to school.

Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has been one of the main coordinators of the Russian response to the pandemic. The World speaks with political scientist Ekaterina Shulmann about what that might mean for Russian politics and the fight against the coronavirus.

Thomas Piketty's new book, "Capital and Ideology," which came out in March, examines the history of policies and political systems that have sustained economic inequality and how the world might move toward a fairer economic system. His message is prescient at a time when the pandemic has thrown the global economy into disarray.

The archbishop of the Church of Uganda has broken with tradition to publicly urge women to use birth control to avoid getting pregnant during the pandemic.

On Easter Sunday, dozens of tornadoes tore across Southeastern US, killing more than 30 people. The deadly cluster of storms coincided with waters in the Gulf of Mexico that were three degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average.

The death of a tribesman in northwest Saudi Arabia has raised alarms about the government's plans to forcibly remove locals from their land in order to build a $500 billion futuristic city called NEOM.

With borders closed and entire countries on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, some 2,000 migrants — many of them children under age 5 — have been detained for months in Panama, near the rainforest separating South and Central America.

The news media has become a vital resource during the coronavirus pandemic — especially outlets serving immigrant communities. But those organizations are suffering from the same financial crisis bigger media outlets are experiencing.