The US state department has announced that it will designate four European self-described anti-fascist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, as the Trump administration broadens its campaign against what it portrays as an international wave of leftist violence.
In a public statement on Thursday, the state department said it would designate Antifa Ost in Germany, the Italy-based International Revolutionary Front, and two organisations in Greece – Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self Defense – as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists … conspiring to undermine the foundations of Western Civilization through their brutal attacks”.
The designation was the first time that “antifa” groups had been deemed a foreign terrorist threat, allowing law enforcement to use more aggressive techniques to oppose them. It also could extend to those deemed leftist supporters of the groups in the United States, allowing federal authorities to use similar surveillance and financial oversight tools against US citizens.
“Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, ‘anti-capitalism’ and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in a statement.
Venezuela said late Tuesday that it is launching a “massive deployment” of nearly 200,000 soldiers in response to the U.S. 
A suicide bomber struck outside the gates of a district court in Islamabad on Tuesday, detonating his explosives next to a police car and killing 12 people, Pakistan's interior minister said, the latest in an uptick in violence across the country.
More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war so far, Gaza health officials said Saturday, as both sides completed the latest exchange of bodies under the terms of the tenuous ceasefire.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats.
Cancer continues to be one of the world's top causes of death, due in part to delayed discovery of the disease. But according to a recently released study, a simple blood test may be able to identify a variety of cancers in their early stages.
The UN humanitarian relief chief, Tom Fletcher, has sounded the alarm over rising violence in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property continue to escalate.
