World

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has fallen ill after his return from a trip to his native Bavaria to visit his brother, who died a month ago, a German newspaper reported Monday.

Scientists at London say they are immunizing hundreds of people with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an early trial.

A rare red panda has been born at a Berlin zoo.

WASHINGTON -- Officials in multiple states are issuing warnings regarding unsolicited packages containing seeds that may have originated from China.

ARKLOW, Ireland -- Now, this is nuts.

CHENGDU, China  — In the more than 40 years since China and the U.S. established formal diplomatic relations, accusations have been traded, tensions have risen and fallen and the two sides have come dangerously close to outright confrontation.Yet the forced closure of the Chinese Consulate in Houston and China’s order in response to shutter the U.S. Consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu mark a new low point in ties between the world’s largest economies that can’t easily be smoothed over.Mistrust and rancor surrounding disputes over alleged technology theft, national security, human rights, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea are now the main drivers in a relationship that had long sought to compartmentalize such issues to prevent them from impeding trade ties and cooperation in managing issues such as North Korea's nuclear program and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.Going forward, the prospects for reconciliation look dim, even if the U.S. elects a new administration in November.Chinese authorities took control of the former U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, on Monday after it was ordered closed in retaliation for a U.S. order to vacate the Chinese Consulate in Houston.A State Department statement expressed disappointment, saying the consulate “has stood at the center of our relations with the people in Western China, including Tibet, for 35 years.”“We are disappointed by the Chinese Communist Party’s decision and will strive to continue our outreach to the people in this important region through our other posts in China,” it said.China’s foreign ministry issued a brief notice saying “competent authorities” entered through the front entrance and took over the premises after U.S. diplomats closed it at 10 a.m. Prior to that, the flag was lowered and workmen began removing plaques and other signs of U.S. sovereignty on the compound's exterior.That conveyed a sense of permanent rupture not felt during previous crises, including the 1999 stoning of the U.S. Embassy in response to NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Serbia, along with the 2001 collision between a U.S. surveillance plane and Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea.A day earlier, China's foreign ministry issued a statement of protest over what it called intrusions into the Houston consulate that violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the China-U.S. Consular Convention.“The Chinese side deplores and firmly opposes the U.S. move of forcibly entering China’s Consulate General in Houston and has lodged solemn representations.

SCAFELL PIKE, England -- Even rescue dogs sometimes need a rescue of their own.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis led pilgrims gathered in St.

PARIS — Olivia de Havilland, the doe-eyed actress beloved to millions as the sainted Melanie Wilkes of “Gone With the Wind,” but also a two-time Oscar winner and an off-screen fighter who challenged and unchained Hollywood’s contract system, died Sunday at her home in Paris.

PARIS — French authorities detained and charged a repentant church volunteer Sunday after he told investigators that he was responsible for an arson attack that badly damaged a 15th-century Gothic cathedral.The man had previously been questioned and then released after the July 18 blaze that destroyed the organ, shattered stained-glass windows, and blackened the insides of the Cathedral of St.

MONARTO, South Australia - Staff at the Monarto Safari Park in South Australia welcomed the birth of a Southern White Rhinoceros calf on Wednesday, July 22.The calf, which has yet to be officially named, was born to mum Umqali shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday evening.Staff said the calf arrived safely and was standing well, feeding and appeared calm and relaxed with her mother.The calf is the seventh born to Umqali and will be one of six Southern White Rhinoceros currently at the zoo.Monarto Safari Park Director Peter Clark said the newborn calf was a significant arrival for a species that is threatened with extinction.“Nearly ten thousand animals have been lost to poaching in the wild in just the last 10 years with numbers surviving now thought to be less than 15,000,” Clark said.

HULL, England - Front-line medical worker Neil McDonald, 52, received cheers and applause from his colleagues as he was finally discharged from the same hospital where he works in Hull, England.McDonald is a healthcare assistant at the Royal Hull Infirmary, where he was hospitalized on May 3 after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.Within a day of his positive test result, he was admitted to an intensive care unit where his condition fluctuated over the next several months.He spent a total of nine weeks in intensive care.According to a local news outlet, McDonald was sedated and put on a ventilator as his family and colleagues prepared for the worst.The day that he was released, the Twitter account for the hospital posted a video of him being greeted by friends and fellow medical workers cheering on his recovery as a bell rang in honor of his victory against COVID-19.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Lawyers for a senior executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei say her extradition hearing should be ended because comments by U.S. President Donald Trump reduce her to a “pawn in a political-economic contest.”Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, at Vancouver’s airport in late 2018.

BEIJING — China ordered the United States on Friday to close its consulate in the western city of Chengdu, ratcheting up a diplomatic conflict at a time when relations have sunk to their lowest level in decades.The move was a response to the Trump administration's order this week for Beijing to close its consulate in Houston after Washington accused Chinese agents of trying to steal medical and other research in Texas.China appealed to Washington to reverse its “wrong decision,” and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the current difficulties are completely created by the U.S. side.Chinese-U.S. relations have soured amid a mounting array of conflicts including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, technology, spying accusations, Hong Kong and allegations of abuses against Chinese Muslims.“The measure taken by China is a legitimate and necessary response to the unjustified act by the United States,” said a foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin.“The current situation in Chinese-U.S. relations is not what China desires to see.