By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/25/2025 9:32 AM
Tens of thousands of mourners converged on the Vatican on Friday for a last chance to pay their respects to the late Pope Francis as a three-day-long period of lying in state entered its final few hours. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/25/2025 8:58 AM
Amazon Friday was ordered by Tokyo District Court to pay $244,167.02 to a Japanese medical device distributor for failing to remove Chinese counterfeit products from the platform. ... Read full Story
Crimea is a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. It was seized by Russia in 2014, while Barack Obama was in office. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/25/2025 7:05 AM
Russian Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov gave the strongest indication so far that the war in Ukraine could be coming to a peaceful conclusion, saying the Kremlin was "ready to reach a deal." ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/25/2025 3:58 AM
After initially denying responsibility for last month's death of a United Nations staff worker in central Gaza, Israel's military has acknowledged that it killed Marin Valev Marinov when it attacked a U.N. guesthouse. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/25/2025 1:42 AM
Paraguay has designated Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and expanded its previous designations of Hamas and Hezbollah to include both their military and political arms. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 7:55 PM
Doctors placed former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in the DF Star Hospital's intensive care unit after his health worsened after he underwent surgery earlier this month. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 3:46 PM
Israel began its Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day events Wednesday night as similar events continue through Friday in the United States. ... Read full Story
China’s comments come after Trump said Tuesday that things were going “fine with China” and that the final tariff rate on Chinese exports would come down “substantially.” ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 12:49 PM
South Korea is bracing for the impact of the Trump administration's tariffs, as reflected in its economic downturn and lowered growth forecast. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 11:49 AM
The Presidency of the Democratic Republic of Congo has announced a ceasefire has been achieved between its government and the Rwandan-backed AFC/M23 rebels. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 10:51 AM
One student is dead and at least three people seriously hurt in a Thursday French school stabbing. The 15-year-old attacker was arrested at Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides school in Nantes. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 10:17 AM
The European Court of Human Rights announced Thursday it has determined that French law and practice failed to protect three minors from sexual assault. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 9:26 AM
Vatican authorities kept St. Peter's Basilica open all night as an estimated 50,000 people lined around St. Peter's Square and out of the Vatican into Rome to view the body of Pope Francis lying in state. ... Read full Story
The basilica is bathed in a hushed silence as mourners from across the globe make a slow, shuffling procession up the main aisle to pay their last respects. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 7:42 AM
Former South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been indicted on corruption charges in connection to his purported role in his former son-in-law's employment at an airline company. ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 7:36 AM
Russia unleashed the largest airborne assault in almost a year against Ukraine overnight, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 70 in the capital, Kyiv, which was hit by dozens of missiles and drones, auth ... Read full Story
By United Press International, Inc. | | 4/24/2025 7:11 AM
As Vatican officials prepare to lay Pope Francis to rest Saturday at St. Peter's Basilica, members of the College of Cardinals are likely looking ahead to the possibly lengthy process to choose his successor. ... Read full Story
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 30, 2025 is:
insouciance \in-SOO-see-unss\ noun
Insouciance is a formal word that refers to a feeling of carefree unconcern. It can also be understood as a word for the relaxed and calm state of a person who is not worried about anything.
// The young actor charmed interviewers with his easy smile and devil-may-care insouciance.
“Gladiator II is OK when Denzel’s off-screen, but sensational when he’s on it. ... What makes the performance great is its insouciance; it’s both precise and feather-light. And it’s what a great actor can do when he’s set free to have fun, to laugh at himself a little bit. ... Denzel’s Macrinus is gravitas and comic relief in one package.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 22 Nov. 2024
Did you know?
If you were alive and of whistling age in the late 1980s or early 1990s, chances are you whistled (and snapped your fingers, and tapped your toes) to a little ditty called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin, an a cappella reggae-jazz-pop tune that took the charts by surprise and by storm. An ode to cheerful insouciance if ever there was one, its lyrics are entirely concerned with being entirely unconcerned, remaining trouble-free in the face of life’s various stressors and calamities. Such carefree nonchalance is at the heart of insouciance, which arrived in English (along with the adjective insouciant), from French, in the 1800s. The French word comes from a combining of the negative prefix in- with the verb soucier, meaning “to trouble or disturb.” The easiness and breeziness of insouciance isn’t always considered beautiful, however. Insouciance may also be used when someone’s lack of concern for serious matters is seen as more careless than carefree.