Raul Castro said Friday he is stepping down as head of Cuba’s Communist Party, ending an era of formal leadership that began with his brother Fidel and country’s 1959 revolution.

President Joe Biden is welcoming Japan’s prime minister to the White House on Friday in his first face-to-face meeting with a foreign leader, a choice that reflects Biden’s emphasis on strengthening alliances to deal with a more assertive China and other global challenges.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has told Congress it is proceeding with more than $23 billion in weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates, including advanced F-35 aircraft, armed drones and other equipment, congressional aides said on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden will withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan before this year's 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, finally ending America's longest war despite mounting fears of a Taliban victory, officials said on Tuesday, AFP reported.

US President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to de-escalate border tensions with Ukraine and proposed the two leader hold a summit in the coming months, dpa reported. The White House said in a statement that Biden spoke by phone with Putin on Tuesday to discuss a range of issues, from arms control to cyberattacks and fresh worries over the amassing of Russian troops on the Ukraine border.

US federal health authorities called on Tuesday for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, after reports of extremely rare blood clotting cases in women under 50. The decision is another fresh setback to efforts to tackle the pandemic, as Johnson & Johnson (J&J) said that these news mean a delay in the rollout of the vaccine to Europe.

Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker, has surprisingly won Ecuador's presidential election run-off, news wires reported. His opponent, the left-wing economist Andrés Arauz, conceded defeat hours after polls closed on Sunday. With almost all the ballots counted, Lasso had got 52.5% of the vote compared to Arauz's 47.5%.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will travel to Israel, Germany, Britain and the Nato headquarters in Belgium in the coming week for talks with government and military leaders, the Pentagon announced on Thursday. Austin will leave Washington on Saturday, but the dates for his stops in each country were not given.

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will join Fox News Media as a contributor, the news network controlled by media baron Rupert Murdoch announced on Thursday, Reuters reported. Pompeo will offer his analysis across all Fox News platforms, including its business network, the company said.

The US Commerce Department said Thursday it was adding seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a US economic blacklist for assisting Chinese military efforts.