Global News

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA and MAURICIO SAVARESE, Associated Press Brazil started blocking Elon Musk’s social media platform X early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through its mobile app after the company refused to comply with a judge’s order. X missed a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to name a legal representative in Brazil, triggering the suspension. It marks an escalation in the monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. To block X, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, told internet service providers to suspend users’ access to the social media platform. As of Saturday at midnight local time, major operators began doing so. De Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country sin...

By Michelle Nichols Reuters  Israel’s military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in  fighting  in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccination of 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Thursday. The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. (0300-1200 GMT), said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s senior official for the Palestinian territories. He said the campaign would start in central Gaza with three consecutive daily pauses in fighting, then move to southern Gaza, where there would be another three-day pause, followed by northern Gaza. Peeperkorn added there was an agreement to extend the pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed. “From our experience, we know an additional day or two is very often needed to achieve sufficient coverage,” Mike Ryan, WHO emergencies director, told the U.N. Securit...

By Eltayeb Siddig Reuters Since floods swept away their home in eastern Sudan, Ahmed Hadab and his family have survived by drinking water mixed in with milk from his last surviving goat. “We don’t have any food,” he said after days of walking, trying to find something to eat, somewhere else to stay. “The sorghum and flour was taken by the torrent, and two of my goats and my donkey.” Floodwaters from heavy rains that started surging in earlier this month have brought devastation across a country already shattered by 500 days of fierce fighting between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Now, the natural disaster has spread destruction further than the conflict. Near the town of Tokar, in the country’s eastern region which has so far escaped the violence, a Reuters reporter saw people pulling each other out of the water onto the remnants of a bridge with ropes. Elsewhere in the eastern Red Sea State,  the Arbaat Dam  collapsed on Sunday, threatening the freshwa...

By Mariela Nava, Tibisay Romero and Vivian Sequera Reuters Supporters of Venezuela’s political opposition and backers of the ruling party each held rallies on Wednesday to mark the one-month anniversary of July’s disputed presidential election, as arrests of opposition figures continued. Venezuela’s electoral council and  its top court  have proclaimed President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, as the winner of the July 28  election , but has not published complete voting tallies. Venezuela’s opposition has published its own tallies showing a landslide win for its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez. The disagreement has sparked  international calls  for the release of full tallies, deadly protests, and moves by authorities to  arrest  opposition figures and journalists. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told Reuters on Tuesday that  peaceful street protests  and  international pressure  still have the potential to unseat Maduro...

By Ali Sawafta Reuters  At least nine Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, Palestinian authorities said, as Israeli forces raided the flashpoint cities of Jenin and Tulkarm as well as other areas in the occupied West Bank in a major operation involving helicopters and drones. The assault, one of the largest seen in the West Bank for months, followed a series of smaller raids in the area over recent weeks as Israeli forces sought to crush groups of fighters from Palestinian militant groups. With Israeli forces battling Hamas fighters in Gaza and facing a major escalation of tensions with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon, Wednesday’s operation underscored the multiple security threats Israel has been battling since the start of the Gaza war last year. The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions said in separate statements their gunmen were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in the three West Bank areas. By midday, the...

By Sofia Christensen Reuters Hundreds were killed in north-central Burkina Faso on Saturday after suspected jihadists opened fire on them as they were digging trenches around a town to protect it from attacks, victims’ relatives and a source who spoke to wounded survivors said. The attack outside the town of Barsalogho is one of the deadliest since groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State moved into Burkina Faso from neighbouring Mali almost a decade ago, plunging the Sahel nation into a security crisis that contributed to two coups in 2022. The ruling junta has condemned the violence, but did not say how many people were killed. Hundreds of wounded people were evacuated to healthcare facilities in the city of Kaya, around 40 kilometres (25 miles)south, where a source who did not wish to be named for fear of retribution said the death toll from the attack was likely higher than 500. Speaking via telephone on Tuesday, the source said Burkina Faso troops had forced reluctant Bars...

By James Mackenzie Reuters  Israeli officials and media reacted with satisfaction on Monday after a  long-expected missile attack  by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement appeared to have been largely thwarted by pre-emptive Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon. Both Hezbollah and Israel seemed content to let Sunday’s attack, in retaliation for the  killing of a senior Hezbollah commander  in Beirut last month, count as settled for the moment. Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said Hezbollah had suffered a “crushing blow” from the Israeli strikes but that a longer lasting solution was still needed. “The current situation is not sustainable,” he told a briefing, referring to the tens of thousands evacuated from their homes in northern Israel, a situation mirrored on the other side of the border in southern Lebanon. “Israel will do its duty and return its population to our sovereign territory.” Hopes that children might return for the start of the ...

By Saleem Ahmad and Saud Mehsud Reuters More than 60 people were killed in Pakistan’s province of Balochistan when separatist militants attacked police stations, railway lines and highways and security forces launched retaliatory operations, officials said on Monday. The assaults were the most widespread in years by ethnic militants fighting a decades-long insurgency to win secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, home to major China-led projects such as a strategic port and a gold and copper mine. “These attacks are a well thought out plan to create anarchy in Pakistan,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement, adding that security forces had killed 12 militants in operations after the attacks on Sunday and Monday. Pakistan’s military said 14 soldiers and police, and 21 militants, were killed in fighting after the largest of the attacks, which targeted buses and trucks on a major highway. It was not immediately clear whether that figure included the 12 mil...

Israeli airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Friday killed at least eight fighters and one child, according to security sources, as armed group Hezbollah responded with artillery rounds and rockets across the border. The Israeli military has been trading fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah across Lebanon’s southern border in parallel with  the Gaza war , with hostilities  ramping up  recently amid fears that a full-scale regional war could erupt. Israeli strikes killed six Hezbollah fighters in various towns across the south, according to the party’s death notices and a security source. Another fighter was killed in a separate strike outside Aitarun, according to the security source. It was not immediately clear if the combatant was a Hezbollah member. A separate Israeli strike on the village of Aita, approximately 14 km (nine miles) north of the border with Israel, killed a Hezbollah fighter and a child, the security source told Reuters. Hezbollah identified the fighter...

By El Tayeb Siddig Reuters For the second consecutive year Sudan is in the grip of a cholera outbreak that has left at least 28 people dead in the last month as  rains fall  in areas crammed with those fleeing the country’s 16-month-old war, officials said. Since July 22, when the current wave began, 658 cases of cholera have been recorded across five states, World Health Organization (WHO) country director Shible Sahbani told Reuters in Port Sudan. With much of the country’s health infrastructure collapsed or destroyed and staffing thinned by displacement, 4.3% of cases have resulted in deaths, a high rate compared to other outbreaks, Sahbani said. Some 200,000 are at high risk of falling ill, he said. The war  between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises and displaced more than 10 million people inside Sudan and beyond its borders. The country is dealing with a total of five concurrent ...

A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday, the meteorological office said, spraying red-hot lava and smoke in its sixth outbreak since December. The total length of the fissure was about 3.9 km (2.42 miles) and had extended by 1.5 km in about 40 minutes, the Icelandic Met Office, which is tasked with monitoring volcanoes, said in a statement. Livestreams from the volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula showed glowing hot lava shooting up from the ground, their bright-yellow and orange colours set in sharp contrast against the dark night sky. “The impact is limited to a localized area near the eruption site. It does not present a threat to life and the area nearby was evacuated,” Iceland’s ministry for foreign affairs said on social media X. The lava was not flowing towards the nearby Grindavik fishing town, whose nearly 4,000 residents have been mostly  evacuated  since November, the Met office said. The eruption took place on the Sundhnukar crater row east of moun...

A fraction of available aid has passed through the Adre border crossing from Chad into Sudan’s hunger-ravaged  Darfur region  this week following a move by the Sudanese army to temporarily lift a ban on deliveries. The army’s rivals in the country’s  devastating 16-month-old war  control most of Darfur and the Adre crossing, the quickest way into the region. The army had ordered aid agencies to stop use of the corridor in February, saying it was used to transport arms, but last week rescinded that order temporarily for three months. After 15 trucks had moved through the crossing, out of a total of 131 at the border, the Sudanese government “instructed no more movements until procedures received yesterday are agreed,” Justin Brady, head for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan, said on X late on Wednesday. In a statement on Wednesday, the World Food Programme said that sorghum, pulses, oil and rice enough for 13,000 people had cross...

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly Reuters Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones that were shot down by air defences in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the  war in Ukraine  began in February 2022. The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region. For months, Ukraine has also fought an increasingly damaging drone war against the refineries and airfields of Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter, though major drone attacks on the Moscow region – with a population of over 21 million – have been rarer. Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences destroyed a total of 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region, 23 over the border region of Bryansk, six over the Belgorod region, three over t...

El Salvador, a small Central American nation whose government has spearheaded a brutal crackdown on criminal gangs, is seeing one person go missing each day, according to a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) citing prosecutors’ data. The attorney general’s office counted 366 people who went missing in the 12 months to May 31 this year, the Working Group for Missing Persons in El Salvador, an association of nine NGOs, reported on Wednesday. El Salvador’s government, meanwhile, reports more than 650 days  without any homicides  since President Nayib Bukele came to power in June of 2019. Bukele launched a so-called state-of-exception in March 2022, under which certain civil rights are suspended, suspects have been sent to  mass trials  and a “mega-prison” has been built. He has won widespread popularity for improving security, securing re-election with a landslide 85% of the vote this February, but human rights groups have reported dozens of  deaths...

By Sarah Morland Reuters The Dominican Republic on Tuesday said it will create a state mining firm to explore and exploit the nation’s key mining resources, including rare earth minerals. The Dominican presidency said in a statement that the state firm, Empresa Minera Dominicana S.A., or Emidom, will explore, exploit and run economic viability studies on the country’s natural resources. The firm will be able to negotiate contracts and alliances with international firms and it will have a nine-member board, led by the minister of the presidency. Emidom is also tasked with managing the Avila mining reserve in southern Pedernales province, which borders with Haiti and was in 2018 declared an area to be explored for possible rare earth projects. Last year the  U.S. military, opens new tab  said a team of its engineering researchers worked with local authorities in the highlands of Pedernales to evaluate the area’s viability. The Caribbean nation is home to Canadian firm Barr...

By Andrius Sytas Reuters Lithuania on Monday began construction of a military base, which will accommodate up to 4,000 combat-ready German troops once completed by the end of 2027, in the first permanent foreign deployment for the German military since World War Two. Germany committed to deploy troops in the NATO and European Union member, which borders Russia, last year. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius  compared  the decision to the posting of allied forces in West Germany during the Cold War to defend Western Europe in case of a Soviet attack. Lithuanian chief of defence Raimundas Vaiksnoras estimated the country would spend more than 1 billion euros ($1.10 billion) over the next three years to develop the base, in one of the largest construction projects in its history. It’s “a huge investment” for a nation of 2.9 million with an economy a tenth the size of Germany’s, Vaiksnoras said on the sidelines of a launch ceremony. “The brigade will work as reassurance t...

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility on Monday for a bomb blast near a synagogue in Tel Aviv that Israeli police and the Shin Bet intelligence agency described as a terrorist attack. A man who was carrying the bomb was killed and a passerby was injured in the incident late on Sunday, according to police at the scene in Israel’s commercial capital. Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said the man was carrying a backpack loaded with explosives that detonated “before he managed to reach a more heavily populated area”. In a joint statement, the two Palestinian militant groups said their “martyrdom operations” inside Israel would return to the forefront as long as the “occupation’s massacres and assassination policy continue”. This was an allusion to Israel’s offensive in Gaza and the July 31 killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for Haniyeh’s death in the Iranian capital. The war in ...

By Sabine Siebold Reuters  Two German warships await orders from Berlin, their commander said, to determine whether next month they will be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait, drawing a rebuke from Beijing. While the U.S. and other nations, including  Canada , have sent warships through the narrow strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the strait since 2002. China claims sovereignty  over democratically governed Taiwan, and says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180-km (110 miles) wide waterway that divides the two sides and is part of the South China Sea. Taiwan strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims and says only the island’s people can decide their future. The Taiwan Strait is a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass, and both the United States and Taiwan say it’s an international waterway. “The decision has not been taken yet,” the commander ...

Hamas said the Palestinian group rejected “new conditions” in a Gaza ceasefire plan the United States presented after two days of talks with Israeli negotiators in Qatar. As international pressure mounted for a ceasefire after more than 10 months of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, US President Joe Biden said: “We are closer than we have ever been.” Washington has joined its European allies in pushing for a swift ceasefire in Gaza since the July 31 killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in an attack in Iran blamed on Israel prompted threats of retaliation and fears of a wider Middle East war. Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators have been seeking to finalise details of a framework initially outlined by Biden in May, and which he said Israel had proposed. But months of talks have so far failed to pin down the details of a truce and hostage release deal. The mediators said that the two days of talks in Doha were “serious and constructive”. In a joint statement...

Colombia’s government will not unilaterally end peace talks with rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN), its peace delegation said, even though a ceasefire between the two sides expired earlier this month. Vera Grabe, head of the government’s delegation, and Senator Ivan Cepeda, said it was up to the rebel group to make decisions about the future of the talks, which restarted in late 2022 under leftist President Gustavo Petro’s total peace policy. “The purpose of this government is to complete the peace process with the National Liberation Army. We’re not going to be the ones to take the step of breaking off the negotiations,” Cepeda said at a press conference in Bogota. ELN top commander Antonio Garcia posted a statement from the group on X on Thursday that said the peace talks were in “crisis” and the rebel group needed “to know if the government would keep its word” and uphold a future deal. It added that peace talks could resume if the government removed ELN from its li...

By Andrew Mills and Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters Gaza ceasefire talks in Doha paused on Friday with negotiators to meet again next week seeking an agreement to end  fighting between Israel and Hamas  and free remaining hostages, as U.S. President Joe Biden said “we’re not there yet”. In a joint statement, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt said Washington had presented a new proposal that built on points of agreement over the past week, closing gaps in a way that could allow rapid implementation of a deal. Mediators would keep working on the proposal, they said. “The path is now set for that outcome, saving lives, bringing relief to the people of Gaza, and de-escalating regional tensions,” they said in the statement. On Thursday, Israel and mediators began the latest round in months of talks to end the war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Palestinian militant group Hamas was not directly involved but was kept briefed on the talks. A senior Hamas official,...

The number of people killed when a mountain of garbage collapsed in Uganda’s capital last week has risen to 35, 12 of whom were young people, police said on Friday. At least 28 others are still missing. The accident occurred late last Friday, when a large chunk broke off the mound of trash at the Kiteezi landfill on the northern outskirts of Kampala. Dozens of homes near the dump were buried while residents slept. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Nine more bodies have been retrieved since  Wednesday , when 26 were reported dead. Police said in a statement on the tragedy that it had been hard to identify some of the new bodies as they were in such bad shape. The landslide followed torrential rains that have battered parts of the East African country in recent weeks, triggering extensive flooding and damage. Residents near the landfill, which has for decades served as Kampala’s only waste dump, have long complained of hazardous waste polluting the environment and posing a da...

By Andrew Mills and Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters Negotiators were to meet in the Qatari capital Doha again on Friday in an effort to hammer out a Gaza ceasefire agreement as Israel continued to slam targets in the Palestinian enclave. Gaza health officials reported separately on Thursday that the death toll there had surpassed 40,000 people after more than  10 months of fighting . This round of negotiations opened on Thursday, and the talks would resume on Friday for a second day, Qatari and U.S. officials said. A U.S. official briefed on the discussions in Doha, who declined to be identified, told Reuters that Thursday’s talks were “constructive.” “This is vital work. The remaining obstacles can be overcome, and we must bring this process to a close,” U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House. Israel, meanwhile, pressed its assault on Gaza. Gaza health officials said at least six Palestinians were killed on Thursday night in an Israeli air...

By Bhanvi Satija and Jennifer Rigby Reuters The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years, following an outbreak of the viral infection in Democratic Republic of Congo that has spread to neighbouring countries. An emergency committee met earlier on Wednesday to advise WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on whether the disease outbreak constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern,” or PHEIC. PHEIC status is WHO’s highest level of alert and aims to accelerate research, funding and international public health measures and cooperation to contain a disease. “It’s clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives,” said Tedros. Mpox can spread through close contact. Usually mild, it is fatal in rare cases. It causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body. The outbreak in Congo began with the spread of an endemic stra...

By Guy Faulconbridge Reuters Russia began evacuating thousands more people from its border regions on Thursday after Ukraine said it was advancing deeper into the country in a lightning incursion aimed at forcing Moscow to slow its advance along the rest of the front. The biggest foreign attack on sovereign Russian territory since World War Two unfurled on Aug. 6 when thousands of Ukrainian troops smashed through Russia’s Western border in an embarrassment for the Russian top military brass. Supported by swarms of drones, heavy artillery and tanks, Ukrainian units have since carved out a sliver of the world’s biggest nuclear power and battles were ongoing along a front about 18 km (11 miles) inside Russian territory on Thursday. Kursk’s acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said that the Glushkov district, which has a population of 20,000, was being evacuated. At least 200,000 people have so far been evacuated from the border regions, according to Russian data. Ukrainian President Volo...