A rare “Blood Moon” lunar eclipse will darken the skies over much of the world this week, closing out a striking season of celestial events that began near the opening of Elul, the Hebrew month of repentance and preparation before the Biblical fall feasts.

Israel issued a sharp warning to Syria and Turkey from the heights of Mount Hermon this week, declaring that the Israel Defense Forces will remain in key positions overlooking southern Syria as long as threats continue to gather near Israel’s northern border.

Families of people they say were prosecuted in Pakistan on fabricated blasphemy charges are demanding legal action against an alleged “blasphemy business gang” accused of using young women to lure men into online honey traps before implicating them in offenses against Islam.

People in southern France tried to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives Wednesday after a rare tornado ripped through a small village, injuring dozens of people and damaging hundreds of homes, including many considered potentially uninhabitable.

America was mourning Wednesday after U.S. President Donald J. Trump ordered flags lowered across the nation following the death of Dolly Parton, the Christian country music legend, songwriter and entertainer who died Tuesday at age 80.

The U.S. Navy has unveiled testing of the AIM-424 Long Range Air-to-Air Missile, known as “Malice,” a next-generation weapon designed to give American carrier aircraft greater reach against advanced aerial threats.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests rose sharply in July, reaching 49,571 — the highest monthly total reported so far in President Donald Trump’s second term, according to government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and analyzed by The Associated Press.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced trip to Moscow on Tuesday for meetings with Russian officials, according to U.S. media reports, marking one of the most sensitive known contacts between Washington and Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The State Department is preparing to send American diplomats back to several U.S. embassies across the Middle East, signaling that Washington believes the immediate threat from the recent Iran conflict has eased, according to reports citing an internal State Department document.

President Donald Trump sharply escalated his trade battle with Canada on Monday, threatening to raise tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts and steel to 50% beginning Jan. 1, 2027, after trade negotiations between Washington and Ottawa collapsed late last week.

China pushed back Tuesday against the Trump administration’s expanding sanctions campaign on Iran, signaling that Beijing will not submit to Washington’s effort to isolate Tehran through what U.S. officials have described as a sweeping economic offensive.

Concerns remained Monday over Christian leader Dedi Saputra after a court in Indonesia’s Aceh Province sentenced the convert from Islam to two years in prison for an online video deemed insulting to Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Residents discovered the body of a murdered Christian teenager in Pakistan’s Punjab province after authorities detained police suspects in the case, Christian investigators told Worthy News on Monday.

Evangelical Christians in Tehran fear they will become further isolated after Iran’s parliament advanced legislation that would increase punishments for Iranians who interact with foreign media outlets, organizations, or individuals.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed President Donald Trump a significant victory in his effort to tighten federal election safeguards, lifting a lower-court injunction that had blocked parts of his executive order addressing mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Trump administration on Monday launched what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called an unprecedented global economic offensive against Iran, unveiling a sweeping sanctions campaign designed to sever Tehran from the international financial system and choke off revenue flowing to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian regime.

The Trump administration formally removed Syria from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism on Monday, ending a designation that had been in place since 1979 and opening the door for broader foreign investment and Syria’s reintegration into the international financial system.

European leaders rallied around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday as Ukraine marked 35 years of independence and its fifth Independence Day since Russia’s full-scale invasion, while senior representatives of the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump were notably absent.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that holding elections in wartime, as suggested by his former defense minister, would “destroy” the country.

The European Union marked Ukraine’s Independence Day by pledging to provide the war-torn nation with 6.1 billion euros ($7.1 billion) for “air and missile defense systems” as well as other “missiles, ammunition and radars.”