World

Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband and the Duke of Edinburgh, died Friday at age 99, Buckingham Palace announced. He was the first male royal consort since Queen Victoria's time in the 1800s — and the longest-serving consort in British history.

Both the Biden administration and Iranian leaders say they want to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement. But they're stalled over who should take the first steps — or make the first concessions — to get there.

This week European, Russian and Chinese partners in the agreement will mediate talks in Vienna to try to bring Iran and the U.S. back in. The talks officially start Tuesday and could take days or multiple rounds.

LONDON — A U.K. government report on racism commissioned in the wake of last year's Black Lives Matter protests has drawn sharp criticism from racial equality advocates, who have called it "deeply cynical" and "a truly historic denial of the scale of race inequality in Britain."

After decades of fighting the patriarchy – enduring death threats, censorship, exile and imprisonment – Nawal El Saadawi died of natural causes in Cairo on March 21, outliving the two Egyptian presidents who tried to silence her: her jailor, Anwar Sadat and her censor, Hosni Mubarak. She was 89.

El Saadawi was the loudest voice for women's rights in the Arab world. Modern Egyptian feminists like journalist Mona Eltahawy consider her the "godmother" of the current feminist revolution galvanizing in Egypt.

A waterway crucial to global trade is currently blocked by a massive container ship, causing a traffic jam that could last days.

The Ever Given, sailing under a Panamanian flag bound for The Netherlands from China, ran aground Tuesday morning. The ship was traveling northward through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean from the Red Sea when it ran aground in high winds and a dust storm.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday announced an intensified coronavirus lockdown going into Easter, warning that new mutations raised the specter of a potentially deadly "third wave" of COVID-19 as Europe struggles in its vaccination campaign.

Speaking early Tuesday, Merkel said restrictions would be extended until April 18. She called on citizens to stay home and for shops to close for five days over the Easter holiday.

BEIJING - After more than two years in detention, former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was put on trial in Beijing for espionage Monday in a case criticized by diplomats and international legal experts as an exercise in hostage diplomacy and for contravening international law.

Security forces in Myanmar reportedly shot and killed nine anti-junta protesters on Friday, bringing the number killed in six weeks of post-coup unrest in the Southeast Asian country to well over 200.

Meanwhile, Indonesia issued a blunt statement calling for Myanmar's military leaders to stop the violence and for the country "immediately to restore democracy."

Residents of Beijing woke up to a choking orange hue in the air on Monday as strong winds whipped up dust from the Gobi Desert and deposited it across northern China. The country's weather bureau is calling it the worst such sandstorm in a decade.

In Beijing, morning commuters navigated cars and motorbikes through the haze, which NPR's Emily Feng describes as "Mars-like."

The thick cloud of dust also caused more than 400 flights at the capital's two main airports to be canceled, The Associated Press reports.

Tens of thousands of people marched across Australia on Monday to protest sexual violence, harassment and gender inequality in the country after a wave of sexual assault allegations tied to Parliament.

Participants wore all black. Many women held signs that said, "Enough is enough." In Melbourne, marchers carried a list of names of women killed by men since 2008.

For more than three years, northern Mozambique has been ravaged by violence and destruction, as a local Islamic insurgency has grown in intensity and brutality. More than 1,300 civilians have been killed, according to one estimate, and some 668,000 have been internally displaced — nearly half of whom are children.

In her first public response to Prince Harry and Meghan's extraordinary interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this week, Queen Elizabeth II says the royal family is "saddened" to learn the extent of the challenges faced by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

BEIJING, China — China's legislature is debating draft guidelines that would drastically overhaul Hong Kong's electoral system to give Beijing near total control over the region's election outcomes.

While Beijing has not publicized the details of the proposals, it has outlined broad changes that would effectively allow Beijing to vet candidates for Hong Kong's legislative council and pack an election committee which chooses the region's chief executive.

Here's a few things you probably didn't know about malaria and the U.S.

At least eight U.S. presidents had it, including George Washington (infected in Virginia), Abraham Lincoln (infected in Illinois) and John F. Kennedy (infected in the Solomon Islands during World War II).

The current U.S. caseload is zero (with the exception of Americans who contract the disease abroad).

Updated at 10:55 a.m. ET

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty on Monday by a court in Paris on charges of trying to bribe a judge and influence peddling dating from his time in office. He received a three-year prison sentence with two of the years suspended.

BOGOTA, Colombia — Since fleeing Venezuela three years ago to escape a socialist dictatorship and the country's worst-ever economic collapse, Isaias Bello has lived in legal limbo.

Updated on Friday at 1:30 p.m. ET

The U.S. launched airstrikes in Syria on Thursday targeting Iranian-backed militia groups in the first known offensive military operation carried out by the Biden administration.

The pandemic and polio are colliding in Pakistan.

It's definitely harder for the country to keep up its efforts to wipe out this highly contagious disease. (Pakistan is one of the few pockets in the world where it's still circulating.) But the lessons learned from its polio effort are proving helpful for the coronavirus vaccination campaign.

The backstory

First, a bit of background is in order.

A German court has rendered its first verdict in a historic trial of two former Syrian military officials implicated in crimes against humanity after almost a decade of war in Syria.

Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET

President Biden and Vice President Harris acknowledged a grim milestone Monday: the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans from COVID-19.

Biden and Harris, along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, emerged from the White House at sundown. They stood at the foot of the South Portico, covered in 500 candles honoring the dead, and listened to a Marine Corps band play "Amazing Grace" as they held a moment of silence.

The 19-year-old woman was standing with a group of about a dozen people on Feb. 9, peacefully protesting the recent military coup in Myanmar, when suddenly, she dropped to the ground.

A bullet fired by Myanmar troops had pierced the motorcycle helmet that Mya Thwet Thwet Khine was wearing. For more than a week, she lay in a hospital bed in Myanmar's capital, passing her 20th birthday while unconscious.

Updated at 12:45 p.m. ET

President Biden on Friday sought to turn the page on former President Donald Trump's "America First" ethos, declaring "America is back" and vowing to rebuild trust with European allies by working on challenges like arms control, COVID-19 and climate change.

Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since the Feb. 1 coup that toppled her government, is facing new charges that might see her held indefinitely without trial.

Suu Kyi was initially accused of importing unregistered walkie-talkies, a charge widely viewed as a pretext for her arrest as the country's military junta consolidated power.

This month's military coup in Myanmar has made an already dire situation for Rohingya refugees even worse, say human rights activists. Now, prospects are even more unlikely for hundreds of thousands to return to Myanmar from sprawling camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

"The coup is obviously good for no one," says Matthew Smith, cofounder of the human rights advocacy group Fortify Rights. "But for the Rohingya, the risk is heightened. This is the military regime responsible for the atrocities over many, many years."

Updated at 2:36 p.m. ET

The U.S. will impose sanctions and other consequences on Myanmar's military leaders in response to the coup carried out there earlier this month, President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.

In an apparent signal to Beijing, the U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that a pair of carrier strike groups were conducting exercises in the South China Sea.

The move — a show of strength apparently meant to signal the new administration's determination to stand firm against China's steady encroachment in the strategic waterway — comes just days after the destroyer USS John S. McCain conducted operations in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, a disputed archipelago in the region claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan.

The U.S. will reengage "immediately and robustly" with the U.N. Human Rights Council, the State Department says, citing an order from President Biden. The move reverses the position of the Trump administration, which withdrew from the council in 2018.

The change is part of Biden's plan to reshape U.S. foreign policy to center "on democracy, human rights, and equality," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement early Monday.

President Biden announced Thursday that the U.S. will no longer support offensive military operations led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, reversing a policy started by the Obama administration and continued by the Trump administration despite widespread accusations of Saudi war crimes.

The International Criminal Court convicted child soldier-turned-Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen of war crimes and crimes against humanity Thursday. Ongwen, was the first LRA commander to face trial for its campaign of terror and violence in the early 2000s. The charges include numerous crimes against girls and women, including forced pregnancy.