The World: Latest Stories

Many Hong Kongers see Zhang Dejiang's trip as the latest example of mainland China encroaching on the island's freedom.

A hundred years ago conscientious objectors who refused to take part in World War I scratched messages of protest and pictures into the walls of Richmond Castle, where they were imprisoned. Over the years the walls have been crumbling away, but now they are to be saved as part of a conservation project.

As publishers and dissidents get snatched up after angering Beijing, fear and fury become the new normal.

Inspired by the nonviolent activism of iconic social reformist Mahatma Gandhi, the activists from a group called 5th Pillar are addressing the problem of corrupt officials, one bribe at a time. The key? An innovative tool called the Zero Rupee note. This blatantly false, oversized purple bill, complete with Gandhi's portrait, is handed to any officials who ask for a bribe in order to shame them into changing their behavior.

Venezuela's continuing struggles with economic malaise and the low price of oil are spilling out in the open with serious consequences — babies dying, consumer product shortages and a national leader being threatened with ouster.

Here's why Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is advocating on behalf of Syrian refugees.

Chicken scratches on the wall mark the number of days one Syrian has spent in a camp that is home to 10,000 of the 54,000 refugees in Greece.

The world is facing an unprecedented displacement of people fleeing conflict, economic hardship and persecution. Many of the displaced are children, and a new report says that half of all child refugees are not able to go to school.

Canada's Sophie Grégoire Trudeau has been in the hot seat recently for saying she needs more help to fulfill her duties.

A hundred years ago, two men made a new map for the Middle East. The impact of that decision still reverberates.

In Portland, Oregon, the Somali community is more mixed than in many other cities in the US. Careful not to leave one part of the culture out, the city now offers a program featuring two Somali languages.

Leeann Chin had to teach herself how to cook. Her mother-in-law was quite critical. She always complained. So, Chin dove in, and in the process, found cooking to be an escape.

“There was nobody on that team who felt like Washington had made the right decision."

In the absence of a human population, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a de facto nature reserve.

These engineers have figured out how to store digital information on DNA. And that’s big news.

Director Laszlo Nemes needed a Yiddish speaker to translate the dialogue and train the actors who would be reenacting the Auschwitz death camp in the film "Son of Saul." Ironically, that man spends most of his days preserving everything about Yiddish that isn’t about the Holocaust.

These new devices promise to automate menial gardening tasks.

The guys who brought you heavy-metal opera "Dog Days" just made an opera about the night before JFK's assassination

Tilda Swinton started out wanting to be a writer. Here's how she ended up becoming an actress.

The science is inconclusive, but juries recently decided against Johnson & Johnson in two cases where plaintiffs claimed their ovarian cancer was caused by long-term genital use of baby powder.

More than 90 percent of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef has been bleached by warming temperatures. Is there any future for the coral in our oceans?

Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera grew up surfing a wild stretch of Puerto Rican coast called the Northeast Ecological Corridor. Years later, when he learned of plans to build two massive resorts in the area known for its biodiversity and as an important nesting site for endangered leatherback turtles, he rallied opposition to the project.

"It’s like I’ve lost 130 friends.”

The African Union is about to admit its first non-African member.

Hezbollah’s most senior military official is dead. A lawmaker is blaming a usual target: Israel.

"They use a lot of emojis," says reporter Sheera Frenkel.

If you want to flee a potential Trump presidency, you could sign up for Maple Match. It's a dating site targeting Americans who want to meet Canadians.

Thousands of people have been protesting in France this week, as the government tries to pass a law making it easier for struggling businesses to fire their staff.

Want to visit a place with clean air? Really clean air? Maybe the cleanest of any urban area in the world? We check out a place north of the Arctic Circle that gets an A+ in the newly updated WHO Global Urban Ambient Pollution Database.

If you're fighting for human rights in the Arab and Muslim world, where do you go for a confidence boost? A Sudanese political cartoonist chose a road trip across America to visit civil rights landmarks.

Some 70 percent of households in India don’t have access to toilets. And the consequences for women are huge.

Nevada has the worst-performing schools in the United States. One solution: A new law that would provide taxpayer money for kids to attend private schools. Opponents argue that the law discriminates against low-income people, including immigrants.

The Mexican capital worked hard to shed its image as one of the world's most polluted cities. Are those efforts now backsliding?

A new Twitter hashtag is reigniting America's conversation about race in Hollywood.

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.