Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices signaled skepticism over the legality of President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student debt for about 40 million borrowers, with the fate of his policy that fulfilled a campaign promise hanging in the balance.

Russia and the United States bickered on Tuesday over whether Russian fertilizer could be donated to Syria as Moscow heightens complaints about obstacles to its fertilizer shipments before the renewal of a deal allowing Ukraine Black Sea grain exports.

Afghanistan’s Taliban-led foreign ministry said on Tuesday that 80 Afghan citizens, including children, had died in Sunday’s shipwreck off the southern coast of Italy.

Russian forces on Tuesday pressed forward their weeks-long drive to encircle and capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces described the situation as “extremely tense”.

Security forces in Indonesia’s restive Papua region have surrounded separatists holding captive a New Zealand pilot, but will exercise restraint while negotiations for his release continue, a top security official said on Tuesday.

India is likely to experience heat waves between March and May, especially in the key wheat producing central and northern states, the weather office said on Tuesday, as the country recorded its highest ever maximum temperature in February.

Hong Kong will drop its COVID-19 mask mandate, chief executive John Lee said yesterday, in a move to lure back visitors and business and restore normal life more than three years after stringent rules were first imposed in the financial hub.

Russian forces pressed their offensive in eastern Ukraine as they attempted to encircle the small mining city of Bakhmut, the scene of the toughest fighting in battlefields saturated by rain and an early spring thaw.

Suspected Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli-American motorist in the occupied West Bank on Monday.

Two Iranian warships docked in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government granted permission despite pressure from the United States to bar them.

China accused the United States of “endangering” peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait after a U.S. military plane flew through the sensitive waterway on Monday, with the U.S. Navy responding that it had been in international airspace.

Foreign ministers from around the world meet in New Delhi this week in the shadow of Russia’s war in Ukraine and spiralling U.S.-China tensions, with host India hoping that issues like climate change and Third World debt are not overlooked.