Hong Kong riot police used pepper spray to disperse protesters around government headquarters on Saturday, fuelling tension ahead of a planned sit-in by pro-democracy activists to protest against Beijing's tightening grip on the city.
Politics
Hundreds of children joined students demanding greater democracy for Hong Kong on Friday, capping a week-long campaign that has seen a large cut-out depicting the territory's leader as the devil paraded through the city and calls for him to resign.
French fighter jets struck Islamic State targets in Iraq on Thursday, and the United States hit them in Syria, as a U.S.-led coalition to fight the militants gained momentum with an announcement that Britain would join.
They may be joining forces in a new Middle East conflict, but Arab nations are defying the United States at a major meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog by trying to crank up pressure on Israel over its assumed atomic arsenal.
The former deputy head of China's top planning agency confessed in court on Wednesday to extensive bribery, one of the highest-profile officials to be prosecuted for corruption since President Xi Jinping launched an anti-graft campaign.
Australian police shot dead a teenager after he stabbed two counter terrorism officers, days after sweeping raids involving hundreds of police thwarted what they said was an imminent plot to behead a member of the public.
Appearing relaxed enough to crack a joke, U.S. President Barack Obama took to the world stage on Tuesday after launching airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State militants but he is still facing huge political risks at home and abroad.
While the world has focused on a U.S.-led air assault on Islamic State strongholds in Syria, American officials said they also struck a blow there against a little-known cadre of hardened al Qaeda militants that posed a more immediate threat to the West.
Thousands of students braved sweltering heat in Hong Kong on Monday to demand greater democracy as they launched a week-long boycott of classes, underscoring a restive younger generation's determination to challenge the Chinese Communist Party.
Pope Francis, in his strongest criticism of Islamist militants to date, said on Sunday no religious group which used violence and oppression could claim to be "the armor of God".