The Vatican says Pope Francis has created a new commission of experts to examine whether women can be deacons, an ordained role in the Catholic Church currently reserved for men

Boris Johnson's spokesman says the British prime minister is “responding to treatment” but remains in intensive care with the new coronavirus

The Philippines has expressed solidarity with Vietnam after Hanoi protested what it says was the ramming and sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat by a Chinese coast guard ship in the disputed South China Sea

The Saudi king has ordered the suspension of rulings and judicial orders regarding visitation rights of children of separated parents, the latest effort to try and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus among households

Israeli Jews have been forced to scale back or cancel beloved traditions and rituals marking the start of Passover, the holiday celebrating the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian bondage

Europe's top court has ordered Poland's government to immediately suspend a new body set up to discipline judges, saying that the chamber did not guarantee impartiality

European governments are struggling to agree on how to help the region's hardest-hit countries weather the coronavirus recession

The largest supermoon of the year lit up the famed Paris landmark, as the city is deserted amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has declared a monthlong state of emergency in Tokyo and six other hard-hit prefectures to step up the fight against the coronavirus outbreak

Germany’s Cabinet has approved legislation that will make it easier for authorities to prevent foreign takeovers of strategically important companies

The streets of Wuhan are clogged with traffic and long lines formed for mass transit as people left the central Chinese city for homes and jobs elsewhere

One person was injured after a fire broke outat a replica of a Prussian palace being rebuilt on the city’s historic Unter den Linden boulevard, which was brought quickly under control

An Afghan official says a Taliban attack in northern Balkh province the previous day killed seven civilians

Officials say an improvised explosive device went off on a road in southeast Turkey, killing five forestry workers traveling to work

The leader of the remote Solomon Islands says 27 people are dead after being washed overboard from a packed ferry last week and the government is conducting a criminal investigation

The coronavirus outbreak poses a dilemma for tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers working inside Israel who can no longer travel back and forth from their homes in the occupied West Bank

A prominent Communist party member who criticized Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak is being investigated on suspicion of a “severe violation of discipline and law.”

The last restrictions on movement have been lifted in the central Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic began

Boris Johnson is in stable condition at a London hospital’s ICU unit due to coronavirus infection.

Wuhan was released from coronavirus lockdown on Wednesday, and it’s as if the Chinese city where the pandemic started late last year has awakened from a long slumber. For more than two months, the once-bustling city of 11 million people was all but silent. Its borders were sealed, businesses closed and communities kept behind barriers. During the 76-day lockdown, Wuhan’s residents seemed to live in a crepuscular world of neither night nor day, with time passing slowly, each day blurring into the next. Now, residents of central China’s largest city are eager to reawaken and for life to flow back to its streets and factories. It’s a cycle many places will experience as the coronavirus sweeps through.

The Ocean Park in Hong Kong had been closed since January due to the coronavirus outbreak.

While tributes to courageous medical personnel putting themselves in the virus' path circle the globe, Mexico and some other places have seen disturbing aggression born of fear

Cardinal George Pell has welcomed Australia’s highest court clearing him of child sex crimes and says his trial had not been a referendum on the Catholic Church’s handling of the clergy abuse crisis

The devastation wrought by COVID-19 across the developed world in cutting into the financial lifelines for people in Latin America, Africa and Asia

The supermoon, the largest yet this year, rose over Durham, England, on Tuesday.

With coronavirus prevention measures shuttering houses of worship, pastors across the country are using that ultimate tool of social distancing — cars — to safely bring their communities closer together

Health authorities in Libya's U.N.-backed government say rockets have rained down on the capital of Tripoli in the second day of heavy bombardment by eastern-based forces that struck one of the city’s largest hospitals

Nearly 60 percent of 217 people _ many from Australia, Europe and the United States _ on board a cruise ship off the coast of Uruguay have tested positive for the new coronavirus

An Ecuadorian court has found former President Rafael Correa guilty of corruption and sentenced him to eight years in prison

The Pakistani military says dozens of doctors who were briefly jailed for protesting a lack of protective equipment to treat the growing number of coronavirus cases will get the equipment they need

A government ministry says Germany plans to take in up to 50 unaccompanied children from overcrowded migrant camps in Greece

People across Rwanda are marking the anniversary of the 1994 genocide at home

As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson fights the coronavirus in the intensive care unit of a London hospital, the people of his country are wishing him well and also wondering who’s in charge

Pakistan's military says its troops have killed seven militants in separate raids on militant hideouts in the country's northwest bordering Afghanistan

Sixty-six people at a single hospital in South Africa have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past few days

A look at the top photos from around the globe.

The workers held up signs reading “covered mouths have a voice.”

An endangered eastern black rhino calf copied his mother by rolling around in the mud.

German airline group Lufthansa is slashing capacity on a permanent basis, saying that air travel will take years to come back to where it was before the virus outbreak

Israel’s domestic security agency says it has arrested an Israeli citizen alleged to have spied for Iran

The prime minister was hospitalized on Sunday with complications from the coronavirus, and was moved to intensive care today after his condition worsened.

The pandas had made multiple unsuccessful attempts since 2010.

Officials say an explosion on the premises of Turkish state-owned defense company Roketsan has injured three employees

Mali says armed men attacked an army camp in the north and killed at least 25 soldiers

The U.S. military says it has killed a high-ranking leader of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group with an airstrike in Somalia

Croatian lawmakers have met at a conference hall in a Zagreb hotel after the parliament building was damaged in a recent earthquake

Police in Bangladesh have arrested a fugitive killer of the country’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman nearly 45 years after the brutal assassination

Cardinal George Pell is welcoming Australia’s highest court clearing him of child sex crimes and says his trial had not been a referendum on the Catholic Church’s handling of the clergy abuse crisis

Former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre has been granted 60 days of home arrest by Senegal’s justice ministry because of the threat of COVID-19 in the prison where he is serving a life sentence

Four German students who were invited to shelter with a New Zealand family during a nationwide lockdown say they’ve been having lots of fun sharing meals, playing soccer and trying to learn guitar