Gaza's two million people are experiencing "severe levels of acute food insecurity", US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. This was the first time an entire population had been so classified, he said when questioned by the BBC about conditions in the territory. Blinken called on Israel to prioritise providing for those in need. UN agencies have said north Gaza could face famine by May without a pause in the fighting and a surge in aid.

Blinken's warning came during a trip to the Philippines as US officials announced that he would travel to the Middle East, his sixth trip to the region since October, as efforts to secure a ceasefire continue. Israeli negotiators were due to begin talks in Qatar in a fresh attempt to agree a deal with Hamas to halt the fighting, get humanitarian aid in, and Israeli hostages out. Blinken's comments were among his strongest yet in setting out the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who made history as his country's first gay and first biracial leader, announced that he is stepping down, two weeks after the government suffered defeat in a referendum on greater rights for women. Varadkar announced Wednesday (Mar. 20) he is quitting immediately as head of the centre-right Fine Gael party, part of Ireland's coalition government. He'll be replaced as prime minister in April after a party leadership contest.

"My reasons for stepping down now are personal and political, but mainly political," Varadkar said. He said he plans to remain in parliament as a backbench lawmaker and has "definite" future plans. Varadkar, 45, has had two spells as taoiseach, or prime minister - between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022 as part of a job-share with Micheál Martin, head of coalition partner Fianna Fáil. He played a leading role in campaigns to legalize same-sex marriage, approved in a 2015 referendum, and to repeal a ban on abortion, which passed in a vote in 2018.

Pakistani airstrikes targeted multiple suspected hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban inside neighbouring Afghanistan early on Monday (Mar. 18), the foreign ministry said. The Afghan Taliban said the attacks killed at least eight people and prompted return fire from their forces. The exchange, two days after seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing and coordinated attack in the country's northwest, marked an escalation that is likely to further increase tensions between Islamabad and Kabul.

The Foreign Office in Islamabad confirmed the strikes, describing them as "intelligence-based anti-terrorist operations in the border regions inside Afghanistan" and saying they targeted a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban. The Afghan Taliban denounced the strikes as an aggression on Afghanistan's territorial integrity, and said later Monday their forces "targeted Pakistan's military centres along the border with heavy weapons," without providing details.

President Vladimir Putin extended his reign over Russia in a landslide election whose outcome was never in doubt, declaring his determination Monday to advance deeper into Ukraine and dangling new threats against the West. After the harshest crackdown on dissent since Soviet times, it was clear from the earliest returns that Putin's nearly quarter-century rule would continue with a fifth term that grants him six more years. Still, Russians heeded a call to protest Putin's repression and his war in Ukraine by showing up at polling stations at noon Sunday (Mar. 17).

With all the precincts counted Monday, election officials said Putin had secured a record number of votes, underlining his total control over the political system. U.S. and other Western leaders denounced the election as a sham. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said there was "nothing free or fair" about the election but seemingly resisted calls from Russia's opposition to not recognize Putin as the winner.