Of 528 towns registered to welcome international competitors, about 40 have decided not to accept athletes for training camps and cultural exchanges before the Games.

A little war now and then is good for Hamas and for Binyamin Netanyahu.

The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors.

Vietnam is facing a fresh battle with the virus but with fewer than 4000 total cases among its nearly 100 million people, it has stood out from the pack.

President Emmanuel Macron’s party has pulled support from a woman who appears in a campaign poster in a Muslim headscarf.

Tough lockdowns and its geographical location has helped the country eliminate the coronavirus but left the nation isolated from the rest of the world. 

The Roman Catholic Church teaches the Virgin Mary appeared to three Portuguese children in 1917 in Fatima, which was then an impoverished farming village.

Loyalty to Donald Trump himself - rather than a commitment to any particular policy position - is now the defining feature of the modern Republican Party.

Former British prime minister fires off a withering critique of the far-left and its approach to culture, gender, race and identity.

The pace of vaccinations in the US has slowed in recent weeks due to ambivalence or scepticism about the medication and declining infections.

Israel vowed to keep pummelling the Islamist faction in Gaza in the fiercest hostilities in years despite a prediction by US President Joe Biden that fighting might end soon.

The discredited theory that coronavirus is a bio-weapon created in a Wuhan lab is gaining new momentum. This is the conspiracy’s origin story.

More than half the retweets diplomat Liu Xiaoming got from June through January came from accounts that Twitter has suspended for violating the platform’s rules.

Israel has killed a string of senior Hamas military figures and pounded three multi-storey towers as it hammered the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, and militants in the territory fired rocket barrages.

Cheney was removed after she repeatedly rebuked Donald Trump for his false claims of election fraud, and the former president quickly responded that Cheney was a “bitter, horrible human being”.

Forty years ago, Pope John Paul II was shot by a gunman in front of 15,000 pilgrims in St Peter’s Square in Rome.

The Israeli government, the surrounding Arab nations and the Palestinian Authority all desperately want to shut down the crisis but the call to arms has moved to social media.

Young women working on the Ebola outbreak in 2019 claim they were offered or appointed to jobs in return for sex.

But that’s no excuse to sit around waiting for it to happen, say the researchers who quantified the regeneration.

P&G’s brands include Gillette, Pantene, Olay,  Tampax, Vicks and Old Spice, but it’s the company’s non-profit work that lines up with the royal couple.

The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors

Gazans reported their homes shaking and the sky lighting up with Israeli attacks, outgoing rockets fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Israeli air defence missiles intercepting them.

Almost every morning Juliet appears. She swoops onto the zoo’s macaw enclosure and, through the fence, engages in behaviour that looks like conjugal canoodling.

The Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship ran aground in the single-lane stretch of the canal on March 23, blocking international trade for six days.

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre reported the earthquake’s depth at 112 km.

The Royal Australian Navy has confirmed the two carcasses shifted from underneath the vessel as it berthed.

Cheney said those who dispute the election results were at war with the Constitution and were sowing the seeds of future political violence.

She indicated she would seek the death penalty for the suspect who was also charged with one count of domestic terrorism.

Diplomatic pressure is unlikely to have much effect as the death toll rises and action brings more retaliation.

“The museum has long had an interest in the themes of inspiration and imagination,” Margaret Weitekamp, a Smithsonian curator, said.

“We are asking people not to hoard,” US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at the White House. “Things will be back to normal soon.”

One 2020 study found that nearly half of mass shooters between 1966 and 2020 have a history of violence against women.

A day of upheaval at holy sites in the contested city of Jerusalem quickly widened into a night of warlike violence.

After her capture and eventual release by the Viet Cong, journalist Kate Webb had the bizarre experience of reading her own obituaries.

At least seven students and two school employees have been killed and many others wounded after a gunman opened fire in a school in the Russian city of Kazan.

There’s been a rapid escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians this week. Here’s what you need to know.

The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors

Overnight, 24 Palestinians - including nine children - were killed in Gaza, most by air strikes, as Hamas fired more than 200 rockets toward Israel, injuring six civilians.

It is the long tail of the now-abolished One-Child Policy that has driven the result in the world’s most populous country. The coronavirus also played its part.

The 42-year-old has been charged with attempted murder of four people, two men and two women.

Whoever wins the June 18 vote will replace moderate Hassan Rouhani as nuclear pact talks resume and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now 82, battles ill-health rumours.

Climbers and Sherpa guides have carried an estimated 3500 oxygen bottles this season. They often get buried in avalanches or are abandoned on the mountain.

Some believers have been going to cow shelters once a week to cover their bodies in cow dung and urine in the hope it will boost their immunity against,

Over the past decade Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko have been working on a variety of vaccines. The pandemic accelerated the trials of their technology.

Israel’s military said it carried out strikes against armed groups in Gaza after militants there crossed a “red line”, firing rockets near Jerusalem.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has been under close scrutiny following an investigation that showed the group of 87 journalists had no black members.

Representative Adam Kinzinger said it should be Kevin McCarthy whose leadership is challenged, not Liz Cheney’s, who is expected to be purged by pro-Trump Republicans.

With COVID-19 cases and deaths decreasing, Italy is assessing loosening lockdown measures and plans to lift quarantine restrictions.

This is the second time in the last month US military vessels have had to fire warning shots because of what they said was unsafe behaviour by Iranian vessels.

An injured minke whale calf that became stranded in London’s River Thames has been put down after its condition deteriorated and hopes for its survival faded.