Scott Neuman

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized in person to Indigenous leaders after skipping a remembrance for victims and survivors of residential schools.

Myanmar's military junta, which seized power from an elected government in February, says it will free more than 5,600 people jailed for anti-regime activity.

The announcement appears to be a gesture aimed at placating Myanmar's neighbors after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, over the weekend snubbed coup leader Min Aung Hlaing by excluding the general from its Oct. 26-28 summit. Instead, ASEAN said it would invite an as-yet unnamed nonpolitical representative from Myanmar to attend the summit.

Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state during the presidency of George W. Bush and led the first Gulf War as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has died at age 84 of complications from COVID-19, his family confirmed.

China's Tiangong space station will have its first female astronaut after a trio of spacefarers blasted off for a six-month stay aboard the orbital outpost.

Wang Yaping, 41, will be the first female "taikonaut" — the term China uses for its astronauts — to board the station. She and two male colleagues, commander Zhai Zhigang, 55, and Ye Guangfu, 41, are expected to set a new space endurance record for China.

A group of suicide bombers attacked a Shiite mosque in southern Afghanistan, triggering explosions that killed dozens of people during crowded Friday prayers.

According to The Associated Press, Hafiz Sayeed, the Taliban's chief for Kandahar's department of culture and information, said 47 people had been killed and at least 70 wounded in the attack.

However, officials have been giving slightly different casualty figures throughout the day.

Ruth Hamilton had a rude awakening earlier this month when a large meteorite plunged from space, through her roof and landed in her bed.

The resident of Golden, British Columbia, woke up to the sound of a crash and her dog barking.

Authorities in Norway have identified the suspect in "an act of terrorism" perpetrated by a bow-and-arrow wielding assailant that killed five people and wounded three others.

Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year-old Danish citizen, was arrested after Wednesday evening's attack in the town of Kongsberg, located about 50 miles southwest of Oslo, police said. Authorities believe he acted alone.

The World Health Organization has announced the establishment of a scientific advisory group aimed at identifying the origin of COVID-19 and to better prepare for future outbreaks of other deadly pathogens.

A 26-foot-high sculpture commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is set to be removed from the campus of the University of Hong Kong in what activists see as the latest sign of Beijing's suppression of freedom in the territory.

Brooklyn Nets All-Star guard Kyrie Irving won't be allowed to play in practices or games, general manager Sean Marks said Tuesday, strongly suggesting that he continues to run afoul of New York City's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for professional athletes.

Although the team is barred by law from revealing a player's vaccination status, Irving has been listed as "ineligible to play" in a preseason game scheduled for Thursday against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The U.K.'s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic ranks among the worst public health failures in the country's history, causing "many thousands" of avoidable deaths, a new report says.

In the first weeks, as the virus began spreading in the U.K., the government chose not to restrict mass gatherings — a radical departure from the lockdowns that China quickly put in place. It was slower to impose widespread lockdowns than the U.S. and many other countries.

A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine struck an unidentified object in international waters in the South China Sea last week, the Navy said Thursday, in an incident that injured nearly a dozen sailors.

In a brief statement emailed to NPR, the U.S. 7th Fleet said that the USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class fast attack submarine commissioned more than two decades ago, was in a "safe and stable" condition after the Oct. 2 collision.

A Defense Department official told NPR that about 11 sailors sustained moderate to minor injuries in the incident.

A suicide bomb explosion ripped through a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz province, killing and wounding dozens of worshippers, according to a local official.

Afghanistan's TOLO news agency quotes the director of information and culture of Kunduz as saying that at least 43 people are dead and more than 140 hurt in the suicide attack.

The sheriff of California's Riverside County, outside Los Angeles, has acknowledged that he once briefly belonged to the extremist Oath Keepers militia in 2014 after emails from the group were leaked online.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing are at their worst in more than 40 years, Taiwan's defense minister says, citing a recent increase in incursions by Chinese military aircraft into the island's air defense identification zone.

Although no shots have been fired, Taiwan says that nearly 150 aircraft belonging to China's People's Liberation Army Air Force entered the zone in a four-day period beginning Friday, as part of what Taiwan calls a strategy of harassment.

Former President Donald Trump has reportedly long been obsessed with the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans — specifically, his place on it. So, he's unlikely to be pleased with its latest iteration — which doesn't include him at all.

It's the first time in 25 years that Trump hasn't made the annual list, which debuted in 1982.

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of basic and clinical biomedical research in the world, says he will step down by the end of the year.

Symptoms of COVID-19 persist or recur months after diagnosis for more than a third of all people who get the illness, a new study finds, potentially pushing the number of so-called long COVID cases higher than previously thought.

Najla Bouden Ramadhane, a university engineer with World Bank experience, has been lifted from political obscurity to become Tunisia's — and the Arab world's — first female prime minister.

Ramadhane was named to the post Wednesday after Kais Saied, who became president two years ago, dismissed her predecessor in July and suspended parliament, Reuters reported.

Riding support from Poland's right-wing populist Law and Justice Party and the local Roman Catholic clergy, nearly 100 provinces and municipalities in 2019 passed symbolic resolutions declaring themselves "LGBT-free."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story and headline attributed comments made on Twitter to the new head of Kabul University. The account cited in the story has since tweeted that it does not belong to the chancellor, but rather to a student at the university, and the account has been deleted.

In its first public safety alert in six years, the Drug Enforcement Administration is warning about a dramatic increase in fake prescription drugs being sold on the black market containing a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.

It must have seemed like a sudden about-face to his followers on Facebook: a message from Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan who fled the country in August ahead of a Taliban takeover, calling on the international community to "extend a hand of friendship" to Kabul's new rulers.

After a record-breaking two-decade career in the ring, Hakuho, sumo's greatest champion, says he will retire at age 36, citing injuries and his advancing age.

The Mongolian-born wrestler, whose birth name is Monkhbatyn Davaajargal, announced his decision to retire to the Japan Sumo Association on Monday, according to Hironori Yano, the head of the association's Yokozuna Deliberation Council.

The question of when humans first migrated to North America has long been a matter of hot debate among researchers who have continually uncovered evidence of ever-earlier dates. Now, analysis of ancient fossilized human footprints in New Mexico has pushed the date back once again — to at least 21,000 years ago.

It's neither a bird nor a plane, but a winged microchip as small as a grain of sand that can be carried by the wind as it monitors such things as pollution levels or the spread of airborne diseases.

It's time for the global community to "grow up" and deal with the climate change crisis, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told United Nations representatives, urging nations to "listen to the warnings of the scientists" in remarks at odds with some of his past statements.

Speaking in New York on Wednesday, Johnson said countries need to take responsibility for "the destruction we are inflicting, not just upon our planet, but ourselves."

"Anthropause" is a word scientists have coined to describe the scaling back of human activity since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it's probably safe to say most people have found it uncomfortably restrictive, a new study published Wednesday suggests the pandemic has allowed many bird species to stretch their wings.

Afghanistan's reclusive new leaders, the Taliban, are asking for a chance to address the United Nations General Assembly, but they are unlikely to get their wish — at least not in the current session.

All evidence points to the fact that Mars once had flowing water, but numerous flybys, orbiters, landers and rovers have confirmed one undeniable fact — any liquid water that was once on its surface is now long gone.

A study out of Washington University in St. Louis might have found the reason: Mars, which is about half the size of Earth, and just over one-tenth the mass of our own watery world, might just be too small.