China began surrounding Taiwan on Monday with a massive military force as part of drills it said was a warning against “separatist acts by Taiwan independence forces.”

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Russia, Iran and Syria to unite in protecting “Syria’s territorial integrity” against Israel, which he called “the most concrete threat to regional and global peace.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed hope that the war with Russia will end next year.

Pakistani authorities are investigating how dozens of attackers armed with guns, rockets, and hand grenades could storm a private coal mine in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 21 people.

A young Ukrainian journalist, who was captured and detained by Russia while covering Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine in 2023, has died, an advocacy group confirmed Thursday.

Reiterating similar remarks he made in the weeks after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year and triggered the current war in Gaza, President Tayyip Erdogan of NATO member Turkey stated this week that Israel is a “Zionist terrorist organization,” the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

Amid calls from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the people of Lebanon to rise up against Hezbollah, the United States is seeking regional support for the election of a new Lebanese president, the Wall Street Journal has reported. 

Hungary’s rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused the European Union’s executive of waging a “political intifada” against him and others disagreeing with its “pro-migration,” “pro-war” and “anti-family” policies.

The Bank of Russia has confirmed its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital ruble, is set for a mass rollout in the second half of 2025, Ledgerinsights reported on Wednesday, October 2.

The new mayor of Chilpancingo, a gang-controlled state capital in southern Mexico, has been brutally murdered less than one week after taking office, the Independent reports. Chilpancingo has long been plagued by feuds and the violence of two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated on Tuesday evening that Israel had successfully assassinated Hashem Safieddine, the anticipated new leader of Hezbollah, who was targeted in an airstrike in Beirut last Thursday. He also claimed that Israel had eliminated the next in line for the position.

At least six people have been wounded, two of them critically, after a stabbing shook the Israeli city of Hadera, but the attacker was shot by armed civilians, witnesses said.

At least two people were reportedly killed and eight injured as Lebanon-based Hezbollah fired some 90 rockets into northern Israel, just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Lebanese people to take back their country.

Israel’s embattled prime minister pledged Monday on the October 7 massacre’s anniversary that “together with God’s grace,” the grieving Jewish nation will triumph over evil.

A Torah dedication ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem marked the first anniversary of the October 7 attack by Hamas fighters in Israel honoring victims and fallen soldiers.

Israel’s military expanded its offensive against Iran-backed Hezbollah on Tuesday with troops moving into a new zone in southwest Lebanon, despite new warnings from Iran.

Sirens wailed across Tel Aviv and elsewhere in central Israel late Monday as Hezbollah fired at least five rockets from Lebanon toward the Jewish nation, shortly after Israel announced it hit Hezbollah’s intelligence center in Beirut.

The US Supreme Court has rejected a request by Republican-led Oklahoma to stop the federal government from withholding federal funding over the state’s new ban on abortion, the Washington Times reports.

In what has been described as an “alarming” situation, the US Patent and Trademark Office last month disclosed data showing that US government agencies have funded research which led to over 1,020 US patents for China-based inventors since 2010, Reuters reported exclusively in an August 29 report.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans has determined that illegal immigrants are not entitled to Second Amendment rights to bear arms. This ruling came after a Mexican man, convicted of illegally possessing a handgun, challenged the constitutionality of the ban.

In addition to the 26 states protecting blocking the Title IX revisions put in place under the Biden-Harris administration, hundreds of colleges across 48 states will do the same.

Kamala Harris has defended her seemingly overnight policy position shifts since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

US Vice President Kamala Harris pledged Thursday to appoint a Republican to her cabinet if she wins the presidential election, saying that would reflect her interest in hearing a variety of views.

A federal court ruled Tuesday that, while a related lawsuit proceeds, nonprofit pro-life pregnancy centers in New York are allowed to tell women that the effects of abortion pill drugs can be safely reversed for a healthy pregnancy to continue, CBN News reports.

A street evangelist in eastern Uganda was hospitalized with head injuries and a broken hand after a mob of Islamists attacked him for sharing the Gospel earlier this month, Morning Star News (MSN) reports. Christianity is legal in Uganda, although Islamic extremists in the country present a severe threat to believers.

The US Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for the separation of church and state, has reported the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to the Internal Revenue Service for “illegal political campaigning.”

Islamic insurgent terrorists in central Mali have given the region’s Christian community the options of converting to Islam and helping their insurgency or leaving their homes and communities, the Open Doors international Christian advocacy organization reports.

A 16-year-old Christian girl has been kidnapped from her home in Punjab Province, Pakistan, and forced into marriage with the Islamic man who abducted her, Morning Star News (MSN) reports. With an increasing number of young non-Muslim girls being abducted and forced into Islamic marriages, Pakistan ranks 7 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.

Hundreds of people answered the call to “surrender their lives” to Jesus during the seventh annual FaithFest Christian music festival attended by 30,000 people in Wilkesboro, North Carolina on Saturday.

Amid intensifying attacks on civilians in Burkina Faso, al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist insurgents last month stormed a Christian Alliance Evangelical church service in the town of Sanaba and murdered 26 worshippers by tying them up and slitting their throats, the Christian Post (CP) reports.

The International Christian Concern (ICC) humanitarian organization has reported that a small community of Christians in Syria is flourishing even amid the devastation of a civil war, which, despite giving way to fresh disasters in world news headlines, has been raging with extreme violence since 2011.