The world awoke Friday to a new geopolitical reality after U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, concluded high-stakes talks in Beijing that highlighted China’s emergence as a near-equal superpower to the United States amid tensions over Taiwan, Iran, trade, technology, and military rivalry.

Malaysian authorities confirmed Friday that at least 12 people were killed after a boat carrying undocumented migrants sank off the country’s western coast, while neighboring Indonesia was struck by a strong earthquake.

Latvia’s government collapsed Thursday after Prime Minister Evika Siliņa resigned amid a political crisis triggered by Ukrainian drones crashing inside Latvian territory near the Russian border.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe held rare high-level talks with Cuban officials Thursday as protests erupted across Havana over the island’s worst rolling blackouts in decades, intensifying pressure on Cuba’s communist government amid President Donald Trump’s hard-line energy blockade.

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Donald Trump on Thursday that any mishandling of Taiwan could push the United States and China toward “clashes and even conflicts,” injecting a sharp geopolitical warning into a summit both leaders had hoped would steady relations between the world’s two largest economies.

The Pentagon has abruptly canceled the deployment of a U.S. armored brigade to Poland, marking another significant step in President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce America’s military footprint in Europe and shift greater responsibility for the continent’s defense onto NATO allies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Iran’s ability to threaten Israel, America’s regional allies, and U.S. personnel across the Middle East has been dramatically reduced, according to Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, who told a Senate committee Thursday that Tehran’s military reach has been severely weakened after recent U.S. operations.

Japan’s prime minister confirmed Thursday that a Japanese supertanker emerged in the Gulf of Oman after apparently making a rare “dark transit” through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz without broadcasting its location.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged the United States to become “partners, not rivals” Thursday as he welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing for high-stakes talks overshadowed by tensions over trade, Taiwan, Iran, and technology competition.

Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar has vowed to return luxury government buildings from the Orbán era to “the Hungarian people,” after revealing that he found a highlighted Bible passage in former premier Viktor Orbán’s office declaring that “the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and fellow Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Yitzhak Kroizer used Jerusalem Day to issue some of the strongest public calls yet from sitting Israeli officials for expanded Jewish control on the Temple Mount — and, in Kroizer’s case, the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.

Israel and Lebanon are set to resume negotiations Thursday in Washington, with Israeli officials describing the talks as a potential turning point in the long and violent struggle between the Jewish state and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror organization.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has submitted legislation to dissolve the Knesset and send Israel to elections, moving to seize control of a fast-developing political crisis triggered by ultra-Orthodox anger over the government’s failure to pass a draft exemption law for yeshiva students.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said an agreement between Iran and the United States may be the best path to ending Israeli military operations in Lebanon, while defiantly rejecting any outside demand that the Iranian-backed terrorist group disarm.

More than two years after the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history, the Knesset has approved legislation establishing a special military tribunal to prosecute terrorists accused of participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the war against Iran is “not over,” declaring that Israel and its allies must ensure Tehran’s remaining enriched uranium and nuclear-enrichment infrastructure are removed or dismantled before the threat can be considered neutralized.

The Israeli military announced Sunday that it carried out a sweeping series of operations against the Iranian-backed terror organization Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, striking more than 40 terror infrastructure sites and killing over 100 terrorists over the weekend.

The Trump administration is widening its campaign against waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government after investigators reportedly uncovered sweeping schemes involving Medicaid-funded home health businesses, food benefit theft, student visa exploitation, and immigration fraud across the United States.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed continued access to the abortion pill mifepristone by telehealth and mail, temporarily blocking a lower court ruling that would have restored in-person dispensing requirements and limited the drug’s reach into states with abortion restrictions.

President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile shield could cost as much as $1.2 trillion over 20 years, according to a new Congressional Budget Office study that offers one of the most detailed public estimates yet of the ambitious national missile-defense project.

The U.S. Senate, in a 54-45 vote, confirmed Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

A CIA whistleblower told Congress on Wednesday that agency scientists repeatedly concluded COVID-19 most likely originated from a Chinese laboratory, only to have those findings softened, delayed, or suppressed by higher-level officials before the agency later acknowledged the lab-leak theory as its leading assessment.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday temporarily allowed the Trump administration to continue collecting its 10% global tariff, pausing a lower-court ruling that found the import duties unlawful for three plaintiffs who had won relief last week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a short-term administrative stay while it considers whether to keep the tariffs in place during the government’s appeal.

U.S. federal prosecutors announced criminal charges Tuesday against the operator of the cargo ship that struck and destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024, killing six construction workers.

Pakistan’s hardline Islamist party and movement, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), has been accused of involvement in a massive “blasphemy business” scheme targeting Christians and other Pakistanis charged under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, despite being banned by the government.

Christians and rights campaigners in Pakistan have demanded “a transparent investigation” into the death of a Christian brick kiln worker allegedly poisoned by a Muslim resident in the country’s east, while another Christian laborer was killed in a separate case.

Hungary’s new center-right government has pledged to restore the church status of the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship (MET), headed by 74-year-old Pastor Gábor Iványi, a longtime critic — and former ally — of ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Hungary’s former state secretary responsible for aiding persecuted Christians expects the new government of Prime Minister Péter Magyar to continue a mission that he says helped save “tens of thousands of human lives” around the world.

More than 100 new evangelical churches have reportedly opened and thousands of people have been baptized in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, church leaders say.

Pakistan’s Federal Constitutional Court ordered a 15-year-old Christian girl to be moved to a government shelter after allegations that she was forcibly converted to Islam and married to an older Muslim man, a Christian advocate told Worthy News.

Suspected Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed at least 13 Christians, including three pregnant women, in Nigeria’s central Plateau state days after a pastor and his family were slain in a separate attack, Christians told Worthy News on Monday.