Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Minding mines in Ukraine, Bangladeshi manhunt, World Cup of gas, GOP crickets for Trump

Ukrainian soldiers clear mines in a part of the southern Kherson region liberated from Russia.

Ukrainian soldiers clear mines in a part of the southern Kherson region liberated from Russia.

Nina Liashonok via Reuters Connect
Make us preferred on Google

61,000: Ukrainians have liberated huge swathes of their country from Russian occupation over the past few months, but that in itself heralds huge challenges. Experts say as much as 61,000 square miles of land could be littered with Russian land mines and other ordnance.


2: Two Bangladeshi Islamic militants sentenced to death for hacking a blogger to death with machetes have escaped from a courtroom in the country’s capital, Dhaka. The men, who were sprung from custody in a brazen escape involving chemical sprays and motorbikes, fatally attacked Avijit Roy, a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin, in 2015. A manhunt is now underway.

100 million: You know who’s not so ruffled by allegations of corruption, human rights abuses, and LGBTQ crackdowns in Qatar? China, which has just struck a deal to buy more than 100 million tons of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf monarchy over the next quarter century. It’s one of the biggest gas deals of all time.

1: In the week since Donald Trump announced he’s running for president again, the response from GOP senators has been crickets. So far just one of them, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, has endorsed him. The GOP is in a bind: They can’t win with Trump, but they can only lose without him.

More For You

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets his supporters as he arrives at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters as the BJP won the Assam state assembly election and was on course to win West Bengal, in New Delhi, India, May 4, 2026.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets his supporters as he arrives at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters, as the BJP won the Assam state assembly election and was on course to win West Bengal, in New Delhi, India, May 4, 2026.

REUTERS
India’s Modi consolidates grip after historic state election winPrime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party won the state of West Bengal for the first time, booting out the once-formidable opposition, the All India Trinamool Congress, which had governed for 15 years. This is the latest bit of good electoral news for Modi, whose party [...]
As ties with the US fray, Canada looks across the Atlantic
Natalie Johnson
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended a meeting of the European Political Community in Armenia this weekend, a first by the leader of a non-European country. He was invited to discuss common interests in trade, energy, and security. In a speech that echoed his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos two months earlier, Carney called on [...]
Romania’s government collapses

Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s government fell after losing a no-confidence vote, putting Romania’s access to EU recovery funds – worth approximately $13 billion – at risk.

Natalie Johnson
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s government fell after losing a no-confidence vote, putting Romania’s access to EU recovery funds – worth approximately $13 billion – at risk. The country, which has the largest budget deficit in the EU, has to complete the bloc’s mandated economic reforms by August to unlock the funds. But with its country’s pro-EU [...]
Participants and protesters hold posters opposing Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's administration and her policies on constitutional revision and military expansion during a Constitution Memorial Day rally in Tokyo, Japan, May 3, 2026.

Participants and protesters hold posters opposing Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's administration and her policies on constitutional revision and military expansion during a Constitution Memorial Day rally in Tokyo, Japan, May 3, 2026.

REUTERS/Issei Kato.
Will Japan rewrite its rules of war? Fifty thousand demonstrators gathered in Tokyo on Sunday, the country’s Constitution Memorial Day, to protest Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's call for “advanced discussions” on revising Japan’s pacifist constitution. Since 1947, Article 9 has prohibited Japan from maintaining land, sea, or air forces [...]