At the annual parliamentary meet, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced he would focus on developing security. He also announced an economic growth target of 5%, the lowest in decades.

China and Russia announced a visit to Moscow by President Xi Jinping next week. Beijing, a longtime Moscow ally, seeks a peace mediator role over the war in Ukraine.

As Chinese leader Xi Jinping begins his three-day trip to Moscow on Monday, all eyes are on how China positions itself in the ongoing war and experts describe the trip as “extremely delicate” for the Chinese President.

China has ramped up bailouts to countries struggling to repay their debts from infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, researchers found.

The Lachin Corridor is the only route connecting Armenia to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku said it was responding to a similar move by Armenia.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Shmyhal discussed Kyiv's formula for peace during talks at the Vatican. Meanwhile, Russia said it found the implementation of the grain deal "unsatisfactory."

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been in a deadlock for decades, fighting two wars over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave that have killed thousands of people.

The Chinese president has promised to bolster economic and infrastructure projects in the region at a "milestone" meeting with leaders from former Soviet states in the region.

Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as “The Road,” “Blood Meridian” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died Tuesday. He was 89.

US officials hope Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to China will lower tensions with Beijing. In what was seen as a special gesture, announced at the last minute, the top US diplomat met China's head of state.

The US president said it his Chinese counterpart was upset because he didn't know a balloon shot down over the US had been blown off course, something that was "embarassing for dictators."

Firefighters are working to keep open the only highway out of Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, as wildfires approach. Canada currently has more than a thousand active fires.