Global News

By AFP | Posted by TOE The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is the “fastest growing” ever, African health authorities said Thursday, as the World Health Organization said it had killed 600 people. Updated numbers issued by the UN health agency showed there have been 1,759 confirmed cases in DR Congo since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, including 600 confirmed deaths. “This is the fastest growing Ebola outbreak ever, not only among the previous Bundibugyo outbreaks, but all the different viruses that are causing Ebola,” Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) told reporters. The deadliest Ebola outbreak — in 2013-16 in West Africa — had 994 cases in the first six weeks, compared to 1,596 in the current one, he said.  “Unfortunately the virus is still ahead of our response. It’s moving faster than deployi...

By Humeyra Pamuk, Gram Slattery and Tala Ramadan Reuters | Posted by TOE Iran says it attacked “US bases and strategic centres” in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar after the US bombed Iranian cities for a second consecutive night. The US attacks have killed 14 people and wounded 78 over two days with blasts reported in Iranian cities along the Strait of Hormuz, including Bushehr, Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, and Sirik. The U.S. military said on Wednesday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war. The latest round of attacks, which the U.S. said was carried ‌out in response to Tuesday’s assault on three cargo ships transiting the strait, came hours after President Donald Trump said he believed an interim ceasefire with Iran to be “over.” “U.S. Central Command ‌forces have started conducting additional strike...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Sudan’s RSF forces carried out mass killings, abductions of women and girls, mass gang rapes and forced starvation in a city they besieged and captured last year, as part of an intentional policy amounting to genocide, a UN probe said on Wednesday. The Rapid Support Forces, which are battling the Sudanese army in a civil war, committed the crimes in al-Fashir in north Darfur, which they captured last year after a long siege, the UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan found. Survivors described to the mission being raped in rooms where bodies of recently killed civilians, including their own family members, were still lying on the ground. The report found that the RSF and allies committed the war crime of starvation by imposing a prolonged siege on the city, impeding relief supplies, and shelling food production systems. The RSF has denied such abuses in over three years of civil war, saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies ​a...

By Dave Sherwood and Ayose Naranjo Reuters Scattered protests broke out across Havana on Tuesday evening, with residents banging pots, honking horns and shouting “turn on the lights” as millions ‌of Cubans remained without power amid a six-month-long U.S. fuel blockade. Cuba experienced a nationwide outage on ‌Monday — its third this year — but while authorities said most of the country had been reconnected to the island’s grid by late ​Tuesday, many remained in the dark and without electricity as the island doesn’t have enough fuel. The country’s grid operator UNE said it had reconnected the grid from Pinar del Rio, in far western Cuba, to Holguin in the east. Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city, remained disconnected and without power, authorities said. The U.S. in January ‌cut off Cuba’s fuel supply, then ⁠imposed fresh sanctions that have prompted an exodus of foreign businesses and a near-complete collapse o...

By ABDUL SATTAR AP | Posted by TOE Dozens of militants attacked a police post overnight in southwestern  Pakistan,  triggering an intense gunbattle that killed nine police officers and wounded some others, officials said Tuesday in the latest escalation of militant violence in the region where insurgents have stepped up attacks on security forces. The attack took place in a remote area of Ziarat district in Balochistan province, police said, without providing further details. The assailants also abducted eight police officers, but all were later recovered by security forces, said Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government. He said a subsequent clearance operation by security forces ended with 15 militants killed. Rind said intelligence-based operations against militants would continue and vowed that authorities would respond decisively to any such attacks on security forces. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack, though...

By HUIZHONG WU and CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY AP | Posted by TOE China’s navy test-launched a long-range ballistic missile Monday from one of its nuclear-powered submarines in the South Pacific in a rare move that drew protest and concerns from countries in the region. The missile was launched at 12:01 p.m. and carried a dummy warhead, according the official Xinhua News Agency. China last conducted a missile test in the Pacific two years ago, then  firing an intercontinental ballistic missile  with a dummy warhead. That previous launch in international waters was the first in decades since 1980. The launch was part of routine annual training, complied with international law and practice, and was not directed against any country or target, according to a short statement from Xinhua, which was reposted by the Ministry of Defense. The 2024 launch mirrored testing that the United States does for its own ballistic missile fleet, which experts viewed as an asserti...