President Donald Trump pardoned former chief strategist Steve Bannon as part of a flurry of clemency action in the final hours of his White House term that benefited more than 140 people, including rap performers, ex-members of Congress and other allies of him and his family.

The last-minute clemency, announced Wednesday morning, follows separate waves of pardons over the past month for Trump associates convicted in the FBI's Russia investigation as well as for the father of his son-in-law. Taken together, the actions underscore the president's willingness, all the way through his four years in the White House, to flex his constitutional powers in ways that defy convention and explicitly aid his friends and supporters.

A top British barrister has pulled out of leading a team prosecuting a group of prominent Hong Kong dissidents, the city's authorities said Wednesday, following growing criticism in the UK.

The U.S. will come back into a nuclear accord with Iran if it returns to compliance, and Washington will eventually seek a stronger deal of greater duration, secretary of state-designate Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

President-elect Joe Biden "believes that if Iran comes back into compliance, we would too," Blinken told his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A tense calm fell Tuesday on Sudan's Darfur region after days of inter-ethnic violence claimed at least 155 lives, left scores wounded and displaced tens of thousands, a tribal leader and a regional official said.

The Kremlin on Tuesday dismissed Western demands to free top opposition politician Alexei Navalny and said his calls to stage mass protests were troubling.

President Donald Trump began his final full day in the White House Tuesday with a long list of possible pardons to dish out before snubbing his successor Joe Biden's inauguration and leaving for Florida.

An out-of-control dumper truck crushed fifteen people to death as they slept by the roadside early Tuesday in western India, authorities said.

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake shook western and central Argentina Monday, the United States Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage.

Chinese rescuers drilled several fresh holes Tuesday to reach at least 12 gold miners trapped underground for nine days, as dwindling food supplies and rising waters threatened their survival.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte appealed to liberal, pro-European lawmakers Monday to support his teetering government or risk handing power to the nationalist right.