The World: Latest Stories

It's an effort to encourage people to support more local musicians.

The lower house of the Italian parliament has given the green light for civil unions for gay couples. One of those who is especially proud is Vladimir Luxuria, an Italian transgender politician.

The Eurovision competition isn't supposed to be about politics. But it often creeps in. And this year's entry from Ukraine, about the Soviet deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944, has Russia crying foul.

The uniform building code was implemented in the 1920s as a way to unify building standards, but it also enshrined in law that restrooms must be segregated by binary gender — a policy that underlies the recent controversy over transgender people and public restrooms.

Canadian Mubin Shaikh says his upbringing in Toronto was pretty typical. But at age 18 he had an identity crisis.

Five members of an Egyptian group whose satirical videos have mocked President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi have been arrested. Last week, they posted a video online that criticized the crackdown on anti-Sisi demonstrations and journalists.

Latin America has long been overwhelmingly Catholic. But a group of former Christians in Colombia who’ve converted to Orthodox Judaism is part of something larger.

President Obama is being sued by a 28-year-old army captain, Nathan Michael Smith. The officer is deployed in the fight against ISIS. While he says the war is just, Smith and his lawyers argue the war lacks proper legal and constitutional authority.

Some people call the formation of The Silk Road Ensemble the "Manhattan Project of music."

In Israel, Memorial Day means public gatherings where people sing together to remember those they have lost.

Duterte’s ascent to the presidency was driven by a constant refrain: Elect me and I will hunt down and kill criminals en masse. Courts be damned. Screw human rights.

Rodrigo Duterte is set to be the next leader of the Philippines, and has promised: “I will be a dictator, no doubt about it. But only against the forces of evil.”

Is this the most secure password ever created? A new technology uses a brain scan to protect access to personal data.

Violence against women is an important predictor of extremism among terrorist groups. But violence against women is by no means an exclusively "over there" problem. And that's the point of a new TV show.

France is a nation of immigrants, but it has an uneasy relationship with its newcomers, even those from its former colonies. A Paris museum aims to change that.

It's not a big deal to be called a socialist this election. But what about a communist? One longtime member of the Communist Party USA looks back.

Minneapolis friends stand trial for charges that include conspiracy to provide support to ISIS and commit murder abroad.

Who could quibble with the US giving malnourished Haitian schoolchildren a shipment of US peanuts? There's history here, and a reason for suspicion.

The impeachment process seemed like it was suddenly off — until it was back on. President Dilma Rousseff may be suspended from office by the end of the week.

Red Squirrels in the UK are dying from leprosy. New research is trying to understand how to change that.

On busy nights, lighting strikes there thousands of times per hour.

The Canadian dish — french fries topped with gravy, cheese curds and gravy — has become one of the latest food fads Las Vegas.

It's usually quite a celebratory moment when the torch arrives, and of course it is in Brazil, too. But the country also has plenty of other big concerns, like serious government, economic and health crises keeping Brazilians occupied.

Energy prices have dropped dramatically. That's cut deeply into the profits of pirates who used to make quick cash commandeering oil tankers.

The UN Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution reminding its members that deliberate attacks on medical facilities are war crimes. The resolution comes after a spate of such attacks in Syria and elsewhere. The Council heard an impassioned plea from Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders.

It's not just the UK's Labour Party, British Jews say there's long been a problem with anti-Semitism on the political left in Britain.

Squash star Maria Toorpakai dressed as a boy to in order to play sports in the Waziristan zone of Pakistan. It went well, until the Taliban threatened to kill her for it.

The fire has destroyed 80 percent of one neighborhood in remote Fort McMurray, Alberta.

Scientists have figured out how to use a "mind-reading" computer to let someone who’s been paralyzed move their hands again.

A Yemeni man who saw his daughter killed in a Saudi airstrike may never be done grieving. But now his anger has kicked in, and he's fighting back.

A new book from the curator of the TED Conference discusses some of the best Ted Talks over the years. Here's a list of all 48 he highlights — plus a couple we couldn't not throw in.

But that cruise raises questions about whether we're making climate change worse.

Global warming has profound effects on our planet, including melting Earth’s immense ice sheets. A new study from NASA reveals an unexpected result of all that ice melting: It’s moving the axis of rotation of the entire planet.

He’s been called the first man "to boldly go where no man has been before." Or, at least, no Englishman. Captain James Cook explored and mapped Australia and New Zealand, and became the model for Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek fame.

In Yemen, the city of Taiz is at the heart of a struggle between the Houthis and their enemies for control of the country. But the forces aligned against the Houthis contain some strange bedfellows.

It was a pretty good bet, too. The odds against the team were 5,000-1.

The father of the 5-year-old boy who became an internet sensation after being photographed wearing a homemade Lionel Messi soccer shirt, says the family has been forced to leave Afghanistan after repeated threats.

Workers at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas have cast their votes to unionize. But Donald Trump's hotel company is refusing to recognize the vote.

Abel and Burlee Vang managed to get around the mostly white Hollywood community by turning to their own community, Hmong Americans. Hmong Americans financed their project, which has now been sold to a major motion picture company.

A surprising and perhaps landmark decision shows how climate change could pose a unique challenge for the legal system.

A new book looks at a community in Mississippi that is at the center of a dark piece of American history. On multiple occasions, black residents were lynched on a bridge outside of town — and that's the subject of a new book, "Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century.”

Puerto Rico's financial crisis deepened this week as its governor announced the US commonwealth is defaulting on a $422 million scheduled debt payment.

An Australian computer scientist claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. But one crypto-currency expert isn't convinced.

Anita Corbin documented women who ruled the punk scene in London. The women are all grown up now ... and the photographer is as well. But Corbin wanted to know what happened to the women of punk. So she's been tracking them down for a new exhibit in London.

When the volcano last erupted in 2002, it displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Now, it's rumbling again.

A woman who fled war in a Syrian city speaks about life under al-Qaeda's strong Syria branch, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Africa’s ambitious Great Green Wall project is getting global support for its twin goals of slowing desertification and helping to provide employment to keep young people on the land.

The new memoir “Lab Girl: The Pursuit of Sanctuary and Science, Inside the Lab” helps readers relate to the world of science.

Israeli-born writer Ayelet Waldman tried to put Israel out of her mind for 20 years. Now she and her husband, Michael Chabon, are bringing writers to the region to write about the West Bank occupation.