World

Britain's head of state King Charles III turns 76 on Thursday, still in the grip of cancer treatment but with his passion for work undimmed by what his son and heir Prince William called a "brutal" year.

Charles paused royal duties in February after he was diagnosed with an undisclosed cancer. Two and a half months later at the end of April he was back at work.

Typhoon Usagi slammed into the Philippines' already disaster-ravaged north on Thursday, as authorities rushed to evacuate thousands of people from flood-prone areas.

The fifth storm to strike the country in just three weeks, Usagi made landfall in the town of Baggao in Cagayan province at 0530 GMT, packing winds of 175 kilometres (109 miles) an hour, the national weather service said.

A powerful conservative communications strategist doesn't believe Republicans will be able to come up with the cash for President-elect Donald Trump's massive deportation plans, he said Wednesday.

Brendan Buck, onetime press secretary to former House Speaker John Boehner, appeared on MSNBC Wednesday to discuss Trump's potential to streamline campaign promises that will come with hefty price tags.

President-elect Donald Trump's MAGA advisers are setting him up to fail on a global scale when he returns to the White House in 2025, a new political analysis contends.

Trump supporters such as Tucker Carlson have been urging an action that Washington Post global opinions writer Josh Rogin argued Wednesday would threaten American influence abroad and the President-elect's reputation at home.

Britain's The Guardian newspaper announced Wednesday it would no longer post content from its official accounts on Elon Musk's X, branding it a "toxic media platform" home to "often disturbing content".

"We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives," the left-leaning newspaper, which has nearly 11 million followers on X, said in a statement on its website.

Russia made an audacious public attempt to blackmail the incoming U.S. president, according to a military expert.

Vladimir Putin and his ministers are already trying to mess with Donald Trump's head when Kremlin intelligence chief Nikolai Patrushev claimed in an interview that Trump had "relied on certain forces" to win a second term in the White House and warned that he had "corresponding obligations" that he was "obliged to fulfill," wrote Slate columnist Fred Kaplan.

British writer Samantha Harvey won the prestigious Booker Prize on Tuesday for her short novel following six astronauts as they contemplate Earth from the International Space Station.

Spanning the course of a single day, Harvey's "Orbital" tracks astronauts from Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain and Italy as they observe and reflect on their home planet, touching on themes of mourning, desire and the climate crisis.

The Philippines ordered evacuations Wednesday ahead of Typhoon Usagi's arrival, as the UN's disaster office sought $32.9 million in aid for the country after recent storms killed more than 150 people.

The national weather service said Usagi -- the archipelago's fifth major storm in three weeks -- would likely make landfall Thursday in Cagayan province on the northeast tip of main island Luzon.

After fleeing Iran and making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, Kurdish activist Maysoon Majidi did not expect to be jailed in Italy for people smuggling.

But the day after arriving on a boat last December, she was arrested and held for 10 months -- a victim, her supporters say, of a migration clampdown by Giorgia Meloni's government.

Rosy-cheeked cherubs surrounded by blues, reds and golds have lost none of their brilliance in 17th-century frescoes discovered behind a false ceiling at the Villa Farnesina palace in Rome.

The three paintings were hidden above the vaulted ceiling of what was once the living room of Agostino Chigi, a wealthy banker and Renaissance patron who had the villa built at the start of the 16th century.

Residents of India's capital New Delhi choked in a blanketing toxic smog Wednesday as worsening air pollution surged past 50 times the World Health Organization's recommended daily maximum.

Cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds trap deadly pollutants.

A prominent Guatemalan journalist and corruption critic, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, says that his time in prison allowed him to strip away his country's "mask of democracy."

Jose Ruben Zamora was arrested in July 2022 after his now-shuttered newspaper reported on graft allegations involving the government of former right-wing president Alejandro Giammattei.

Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller's uncle opened up to the Daily Mail about his nephew's plans for mass deportation — and how it terrifies him.

This comes as Miller was tapped for Trump's deputy chief of staff, who will help manage operations at the White House under Susie Wiles, the manager of Trump's 2024 campaign.