President Joe Biden has opened 2023 by watching the first sunrise of the new year from the U.S. Virgin Islands and attending church.

Ukrainians have had a grim start to 2023 with yet more sirens and fresh Russian missile attacks on their territory.

The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has unfolded in an entirely un-papal-like manner: There were no bells tolling in St. Peter’s Basilica, no solemn announcement in a Vatican City square and no mobilizing of official delegations to Rome.

The U.N. says one of its top officials in Afghanistan has met the Taliban’s deputy prime minister to discuss a ban on women working at nongovernmental groups.

Donald Trump began 2022 on a high.

Pope Francis has marked the New Year by presiding over Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and praying for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, a day after his retired predecessor’s death.

A spokesman for the Taliban-led government says a bombing at a military airport checkpoint in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed and wounded several people.

Pakistan and India say they have exchanged lists of their nuclear facilities as part of a 1988 agreement that bans them from attacking each other’s installations.

The army says a military operation in Pakistan’s northwest targeting militants triggered a firefight that left a soldier and four fighters dead.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI rarely got credit for having turned the Vatican around on clergy sexual abuse, but as cardinal and pope, he pushed through revolutionary changes to church law to make it easier to defrock predator priests.