Brazil, Germany, India and Japan have renewed their bid for permanent seats in an expanded UN Security Council, a long-sought goal without clear prospects.

The cash envelope that accompanies each Nobel prize will be increased this year from nine to 10 million kronor ($1.1 million), the Nobel Foundation said yesterday.

The United Nations and Britain said Wednesday they would co-host a global climate summit on December 12, the fifth anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement.

All passenger vehicles sold in California will be zero-emission by 2035 under a new rule aimed at fighting climate change and smog-fouled air.

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was arrested yesterday for taking part in a protest at the height of the city’s pro-democracy unrest last year, but he vowed to continue resisting China’s crackdown on dissent.

Outrage and heartbreak boiled over into protests in cities across the US on Wednesday after news broke that none of the three officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death were charged with her killing.

After several years of dismissing global action to fight climate change, US leadership has been formally challenged by China announcing bold new climate pledges.

A Massachusetts construction worker’s love of black licorice wound up costing him his life. Eating a bag and a half every day for a few weeks threw his nutrients out of whack and caused the 54-year-old man’s heart to stop, doctors have reported.

Ignoring calls for an end to his 26-year grip on power, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus was sworn in for a sixth term yesterday after an election that the opposition and several foreign governments say was rigged.

At least 380 whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia, officials said yesterday, with rescuers managing to free just a few dozen survivors.

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny made his first public appearance yesterday after being discharged from a Berlin hospital where Germany said he was being treated for poisoning by a potentially deadly nerve agent.

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has roiled the US presidential race, with the battle over her replacement looming large in swing states likely to determine the course of an election just six weeks from Tuesday.

The world is becoming less tolerant of migrants, according to a poll released yesterday as Europe prepared to unveil a new asylum plan in the wake of a blaze at an overcrowded camp in Greece that left thousands without shelter.

World leaders must not let themselves be dominated by a power struggle between the US and China, French President Emmanuel Macron has told the UN, calling for a “modern new consensus” on tackling global challenges.

In his centerpiece address to the historic and unprecedented 75th session of the UN General Assembly, Secretary-General António Guterres has appealed for global solidarity to overcome Covid-19, and again called for a global ceasefire during the pandemic, by the end of the year.

China sentenced a former property executive who once called President Xi Jinping “a clown” to 18 years in prison for graft, a court said yesterday, in what some critics called an especially harsh sentence amid an ongoing clampdown on dissent. Ren Zhiqiang, the former chairman of Huayuan, a state-owned real estate group, was convicted for illegal gains totalling 112 million yuan ($16.5 million), according to a notice on the website of Beijing No.

The death toll from an apartment block collapse in western India climbed to 20 yesterday, with more bodies likely to be recovered, officials said, as rescuers searched for survivors.

US President Donald Trump has telephoned two Scandinavian MPs to thank them for nominating him for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, the two lawmakers said yesterday.

US authorities have charged a New York police officer with espionage, accusing him of gathering information about the city’s Tibetan community for the Chinese government.

UN chief yesterday warned against a new “Cold War” between US and China as the leaders of the world’s most advanced economies delivered their speeches at UN.