The EU formally opened the first negotiation cluster with Ukraine and Moldova in Luxembourg on Monday, a breakthrough made possible only after Hungary's new government struck a bilateral deal on minority rights in Transcarpathia. Commissioner Marta Kos signalled five more clusters could follow as early as July.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday that the conflict in Ukraine was a war unleashed by the West language that goes further than any ceasefire signal and positions Minsk as the staging ground for Moscow's maximalist narrative.

T.J. Watt's three-year, $123 million extension has landed on Bleacher Report's list of the NFL's worst contracts, but the real problem runs deeper than a rankings piece can capture Pittsburgh's front office built a cap trap it cannot easily escape.

Mike Brown was fired twice after winning the NBA's Coach of the Year award. On Friday night in San Antonio, the city his family calls home, he won his fifth championship ring the first as a head coach.

Nick Martinez, a 35-year-old journeyman earning $13 million, opens a three-game series Monday night against a Dodgers lineup that costs more than the bottom four teams in baseball combined. The payroll gap is $313 million. The timing, with CBA talks escalating, is no accident.

Willi Castro drove in seven runs including a grand slam as the Colorado Rockies shattered their franchise runs record with a 23-9 rout of the Athletics, scoring more runs in a single game than any MLB team has managed all season.

Daichi Kamada's deflected 88th-minute header denied the Netherlands in Dallas, but the more important story is what Japan's two-comeback draw reveals about a side that has made resilience into tactical doctrine. Group F just got a lot more interesting.

Real Madrid have confirmed the signing of Marc Cucurella from Chelsea on a six-year contract, with a 55m guaranteed fee, as Jose Mourinho makes the Spanish left-back his first major statement signing. The deal strips Xabi Alonso's Chelsea of one of its few senior professionals before the incoming manager has even taken charge.

Livano Comenencia's 21st-minute equalizer against four-time champions Germany gave Curaao, a Caribbean island of 158,000, its first World Cup goal but the deeper story belongs to 78-year-old Dick Advocaat, who returned from his daughter's sickbed to make history on soccer's biggest stage.

Golden State's reported pitch to LeBron James that he could commute from Los Angeles to some unspecified degree without relocating his family is the strangest recruiting line in recent NBA memory, and the most honest signal yet of how urgent the Warriors' situation has become.

Brandon Bussi was days from Charlotte and an AHL season when Carolina claimed him off waivers. Eight months later, his 22-save shutout sealed the Hurricanes' first Stanley Cup in 20 years, capping the most unlikely title run in recent NHL memory.

Ivory Coast beat Ecuador 1-0 in Philadelphia on the strength of a 90th-minute Amad Diallo goal, but the real story was what happened when Yan Diomande stopped playing out of position. The Elephants' Group E opener revealed a team that cannot yet afford to hide its best creative player.

Hamas's political office deputy head Musa Abu Marzouk said Palestinians have consistently backed Russia as a mediator in Gaza, but Israel's refusal to accept any party without its own consent has kept Moscow sidelined. The disclosure sharpens a structural paradox at the center of Gaza diplomacy: the party prosecuting the genocide holds effective veto power ...

Russia's ambassador to ASEAN says the West is actively pumping weapons into Asia Pacific countries and building narrow military-political blocs, with Japan's rearmament raising particular alarm. The warning comes days before Vladimir Putin hosts all 11 ASEAN leaders in Kazan.

Iran's Mehr News Agency has published draft terms showing the final Iran-US accord must be approved by a UN Security Council resolution placing the fate of the June 19 Geneva deal in the hands of China and Russia, who vetoed a similar Hormuz measure just months ago.

A 14-point draft memorandum of understanding, circulated by Iranian state media, commits the United States to suspending oil and petrochemical sanctions immediately upon signing and to freezing its military posture in the Middle East. The clause is the most consequential in the agreement, and still the most contested.

For the first time in a binding bilateral text, Iran has pledged it will never produce, develop, or acquire a nuclear weapon a commitment more explicit than any made under the JCPOA. But the agreement leaves Tehran's entire missile program untouched and hands verification duties to an IAEA that hasn't had site access in over a year.

Waratahs centre Henry O'Donnell, 23, has accepted an 18-month doping ban over ADHD medication he took without an exemption. Sports Integrity Australia ruled it unintentional, and he has since been granted the exemption he lacked.

The Fair Work Commission has rejected Inpex's bid to shut down a strike by about 400 workers at the Ichthys LNG project, finding no proof the action would harm the economy. The cargo loading ban stays in place until at least June 23.

Bunnings will be among the first Australian retailers to sell directly inside Google's AI Mode, letting shoppers research and buy without leaving the chatbot. It is a convenience for customers and a quiet handover of the storefront to Google.

Four of Australia's largest employer groups have asked the Senate to throw out Labor's plan to scrap the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount. A committee that began hearings Monday must report by June 22, days before the legislation's window closes.

Andrey Zvyagintsev's 'Minotaur' took the A$60,000 Sydney Film Prize as the 73rd Sydney Film Festival closed on its highest-grossing run yet. For a film already carrying the Cannes Grand Prix, the win is less about the trophy than the road to audiences.

Former NRL and Fiji forward Kane Evans came out as gay on national television, the first high-profile man in Australian rugby league to do so since Ian Roberts in 1995. The 31-year silence between them is the part that should trouble the sport.

Australia has recorded its worst diphtheria outbreak since 1991 and its first death from the disease in nearly a decade, with most of the 245 cases in remote Northern Territory communities. A vaccine blitz has slowed it, but the gaps it exposed remain.

Three tiny fossil species from Queensland's Riversleigh deposits do not fit the marsupial family tree, and UNSW palaeontologists have proposed a new order, Keeunamorphia, to hold them. The find hints Australia's marsupials had several ancestors, not one.