
United States President Donald Trump drove past supporters on Sunday outside the hospital where he was being treated for COVID-19, after announcing on Twitter a surprise visit to his backers.

Mask-clad Muslims circled Islam's holiest site along socially distanced paths on Sunday, as Saudi authorities partially resumed the year-round umrah pilgrimage amid extensive health precautions after seven-month coronavirus hiatus.

White House officials sought to project an air of business as usual on Friday despite President Donald Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, but aides privately expressed concern about the presidential election and showed signs of rising worry about the coronavirus.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday nominated a judge with a record of flexible rulings to the country’s Supreme Court, frustrating evangelical members of his conservative base who had been promised one of their own for the opening.

By Gwynne Dyer – “I’ve got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel,” said Blackadder’s sidekick Baldrick in the BBC’s brilliant historical comedy series ‘Blackadder.’ In fact, he said, “I have a cunning plan” in almost every episode, but the plans hardly ever worked, and it became a popular catch-phrase.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had no breakthrough to announce on Friday as a week of EU talks with Britain ended, but remained optimistic that sealing a deal on a post-Brexit trade relationship was still possible before the end of the year.

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it will take up a long-running legal dispute over whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can loosen U.S. media ownership rules. A lower court has thwarted the FCC's efforts to revise the rules since 2003 in a series of decisions.

Voters in New Caledonia, a French archipelago in the South Pacific, will choose whether they want independence from France in a referendum that marks a milestone in a three-decade decolonization effort.

Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo and the Deputy Chief Minister Dr. Joseph Garcia held a virtual meeting with members of the All-Party Group on Gibraltar on Thursday, which included Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords with Group Chair Sir Bob Neil MP.

The Falkland Islands Executive Council has approved a framework for assessing who should be considered a ‘prohibited person’. Under the umbrella of a wider approach, the issue also refers to the reiterative problems with some visiting Argentines whose conduct of displaying symbols or disregarding local authorities cause alarm and distress among the local population.