Global News

By Hyunsu Yim and Josh Smith Reuters North Korea flexed its military muscle with the test of a huge new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed Hwasong-19, state media said on Friday, amid international uproar over its troops deployed to aid Russia in Ukraine. The  launch on Thursday  flew higher than any previous North Korean missile, according to the North as well as militaries in South Korea and Japan that tracked its flight deep into space before it splashed down in the ocean between Japan and Russia. State news agency KCNA lauded it as “the world’s strongest strategic missile.” While questions remain over North Korea’s ability to guide such a missile and protect a nuclear warhead as it reenters the atmosphere, the Hwasong-19, like North Korea’s other latest ICBMs, demonstrated the range to strike nearly anywhere in the United States. “The new-type ICBM proved before the world that the hegemonic position we have secured in the development and manufacture ...

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas Reuters Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with new bombardments that killed at least 30 people on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, a day after one of the deadliest single strikes of the  year-old war  killed scores in the north of the enclave. Eight of Wednesday’s victims were killed in a strike on the Salateen area of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The area is near where medics said at least 93 people were killed or missing on Tuesday in an Israeli strike Washington called “horrifying”. The Israeli military assault that has laid waste to the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of people shows no signs of slowing as Israel wages a new war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and its backer the United States tries after a year of failed attempts to broker ceasefires for both. Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled militant group Hamas’ command structure, is currently the focus of the military’s assault....

The war in Sudan has displaced more than 14 million people, or about 30% of the population, since it broke out over a year ago, creating the world’s largest displacement crisis this year, the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday. Of those, 11 million are internally displaced and 3.1 million have fled to neighboring countries, Amy Pope, director-general of the IOM, said in a press briefing from Port Sudan. The number of the displaced had increased by 200,000 since September, she said. More than half are women and over a quarter are children under 5 years old, according to Pope. “The scale of the displacement and the humanitarian needs are growing every day. Frankly, half of the population now needs help,” she said, noting they have no access to shelter, clean drinking water or health care. As a result, disease is spreading fast and 1 in 2 Sudanese is struggling to get the minimal amount of food to survive. Famine conditions have taken hold in North Darfur, she said....

By Felix Light and Lucy Papachristou Reuters Thousands of people protested outside Georgia’s parliament in Tbilisi on Monday after the governing party won an election marked by reports of voting irregularities, prompting Western powers to call for investigations. The protesters, some carrying anti-Russia banners, had viewed the parliamentary election as a crucial choice for the country’s future. On one side, the Georgian Dream party has deepened ties with Russia, while the opposition is seeking to fast-track integration with Europe. Georgia has applied for EU membership but its candidate status was frozen over  legislation on foreign agents . The word “stolen” was projected onto the front of Soviet-era parliament building in Tbilisi, the South Caucasus country’s capital, but there were no signs of clashes as police looked on. Georgian Dream, which came to power in 2012, won nearly 54% of the vote in Saturday’s election, the election commission said. The four main opposition pa...

Around 40 soldiers were killed in an attack on a military base in Chad’s Lake region over the weekend, the central African country’s presidency said on Monday. President Mahamat Idriss Deby was in the area on Monday to launch an operation to track down the assailants, a presidency statement said. The presidency blamed Sunday’s attack on Boko Haram in a second statement issued later on Monday.  The Lake Chad region  has been repeatedly attacked by insurgencies including by Islamic State in West Africa and Boko Haram, which erupted in northeast Nigeria in 2009 and spread to the west of Chad. There was no immediate claim of responsibility from the group. Chad is an important ally for French and U.S. forces aiming to fight jihadists in the Sahel, which has become the epicentre of global terrorism under attack by factions loyal to al Qaeda and Islamic State. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have ended military operations with the U.S. and France in recent years and turned to ...

By Andrius Sytas Reuters The opposition Social Democrats claimed victory in Lithuania’s parliamentary election on Sunday, which was dominated by frustration with the cost of living and worries over potential threats from neighbouring Russia. The left-leaning grouping has pledged to maintain the Baltic state’s hefty defence spending programme, while criticising the centre-right coalition government of Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte over raising taxes to fund it. Official government data showed the centre-left grouping leading with 52 seats in the 141-member assembly, after 99% of the vote was counted. The ruling Homeland Union Party was on track to take second place with 28 seats. The Baltic country of 2.9 million people has a hybrid voting system in which half of parliament was elected by popular vote on Oct. 13. The remainder was decided on Sunday in district-based run-off votes between the top two candidates, a process that favours the larger parties. SD leader Vilija Blinkevic...

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly Reuters President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia’s defence ministry was working on different ways to respond if the United States and its NATO allies help Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with long-range Western missiles. The 2-1/2-year-old  Ukraine war  has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War, and Russian officials say the war is now entering its most dangerous phase. Russia has been signalling to the United States and its allies for weeks that if they give permission to Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory with Western-supplied missiles, then Moscow will consider it a major escalation. Putin said on Sept. 12 that Western approval for such a step would mean “the  direct involvement  of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine” because NATO military infrastructure and personnel would have to be involved in t...

By Nafisa Eltahir and Khalid Abdelaziz Reuters  Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed at least 124 people in a village in El Gezira State on Friday, activists said, in one of the deadliest incidents of an 18-month war and largest in a spate of attacks in the state. Following the surrender of high-ranking RSF officer Abuagla Keikal to the army last Sunday, pro-democracy activists said the RSF has carried out  revenge attacks  in the farming state where he comes from, killing and detaining civilians and displacing thousands. Gezira has already faced a  months-long rampage  in which residents told Reuters the RSF looted homes, killed scores of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands. Al-Sireha village, in the north of the state, experienced the worst of the recent violence when at least 124 were killed and 100 injured in the RSF raid, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, said on Saturday. In a statement on Friday, ...

BY JON GAMBRELL AP Israel pounded Iran with a series of airstrikes early Saturday, saying it was targeting military sites in retaliation for the  barrage of ballistic missiles  the Islamic Republic fired upon Israel earlier in the month. Explosions could be heard in the Iranian capital, Tehran, though the Islamic Republic insisted they caused only “limited damage.” The attack risks pushing the archenemies closer to all-out war at a time of  spiraling violence across the Middle East , where militant groups backed by Iran — including  Hamas in Gaza  and  Hezbollah in Lebanon  — are already  at war with Israel . Saturday marked the first time Israel’s military has openly attacked Iran, which hasn’t faced a sustained barrage of fire from a foreign enemy since its 1980s war with Iraq. Israel’s hourslong attack ended just before sunrise in Tehran, with the Israeli military saying it targeted “missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the mis...

By Felix Light and Lucy Papachristou Reuters Georgians voted on Saturday in a  parliamentary election  depicted by both sides as an existential battle that will determine whether the country integrates closely with the West or leans back towards Russia. The vote pits the ruling Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012, against four main blocs representing the pro-Western opposition. Polls opened at 0400 GMT and will close at 1600 GMT, with some 3.5 million Georgians eligible to cast ballots. Georgian Dream’s reclusive billionaire founder and ex-prime minister,  Bidzina Ivanishvili , said the election was “a very simple choice. “Either we elect a government that serves you, the Georgian people…or we elect an agent of a foreign country that will only fulfil the tasks of a foreign country,” Ivanishvili, considered to be the country’s main powerbroker, said as he cast his vote in Tbilisi on Saturday. “This day will determine Georgia’s future,” President Salome Zourabich...

More than 10,000 people in Haiti have been internally displaced in the last week as armed gangs operating in and around the capital Port-au-Prince ramp up attacks on areas they do not yet control, according U.N. migration agency estimates on Thursday. The agency had said at the start of September that more than 700,000 people were internally displaced across the Caribbean nation, nearly double the figure six months earlier. Gangs have in the last week been ramping up attacks on a number of towns outside the capital, where much of the city and its suburbs is under the control of various violent armed groups united under a common alliance known as Viv Ansanm. The  conflict is fueling famine-level hunger  in parts of the population as gangs take over farmlands and block off transport routes, while people forced to flee their homes – often to host families or makeshift camps – can no longer depend on steady income to afford food. While the U.N.  authorized an internationa...

Cuba said on Wednesday it would keep schools closed and non-essential workers home through Sunday as the crisis-racked Caribbean island nation struggled to recover from the collapse of its power grid last Friday and Hurricane Oscar this week. The island’s far eastern province of Guantanamo was particularly hard hit by Oscar, which made landfall as a category one hurricane and unleashed more than 15 inches of rain in some areas. The cyclone was downgraded to a tropical storm before veering north to the Bahamas earlier this week. The storm, combined with a nearly unprecedented electrical grid collapse on Friday, created a nightmare scenario in a country already suffering dramatic food, fuel and medicine shortages. The crisis prompted scattered protests throughout Havana and elsewhere in the country. Officials said late on Tuesday seven people had died as a result of the storm. Cuba’s armed forces had rescued nearly 500 people from remote areas isolated by floodwaters or landslides, w...

By Libby George Reuters Nearly half of Africa’s citizens live in a country where governance has worsened over the past decade, as deteriorating security erodes progress, according to a new report. The annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance report found that despite positive progress in 33 countries, overall governance was worse in 2023 in 21 countries, accounting for just under half of Africa’s population, compared with 2014. For several countries, including densely populated Nigeria and Uganda, the deterioration in overall governance had worsened over the second part of the decade, according to the report released by Sudanese-British billionaire businessman Mo Ibrahim’s foundation. “We can see really a huge arc of instability and conflicts and this deterioration, and security and safety of our people, is the biggest driver of deterioration and governance…putting everything down in general,” Ibrahim told Reuters in an interview. Ibrahim pointed to the coups in West Africa and ...

By Maya Gebeily and Maayan Lubell Reuters  Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at two bases near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and a naval base west of Haifa on Tuesday morning just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony  Blinken  arrived in Israel to make another push for an elusive ceasefire. Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to bring an end to the year-long war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza and its spillover conflict between the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel, which has intensified in recent weeks after a year of exchanges of fire mostly across Lebanon’s southern border. After a heavy night of Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s south and the southern suburbs of its capital Beirut, Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at the Glilot base used by Unit 8200 of Israeli military intelligence, and the Nirit area in Tel Aviv’s suburbs. The group said it also fired rockets at a naval base outside the port city of Haifa further north. There were no immedi...

Mozambique police on Monday fired teargas and bullets at protesters in the capital Maputo who had gathered at the scene where two opposition party figures were  shot dead  on Saturday after a disputed election. A Reuters witness saw some police officers firing handguns while dispersing the crowd. Adriano Nuvunga, director of Mozambique’s Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, said that two journalists and a security guard were hit by bullets but not seriously wounded. A police spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment. The full results of Mozambique’s Oct. 9 national election are expected this week, with  early results  showing that the ruling party Frelimo is set for another win. Opposition candidates say the poll was rigged. Frelimo has ruled the southern African country since 1975 and has been accused of electoral fraud by opposition leaders, civil society and election observers, which it denies. Mozambique’s electoral commission has declined...

By Tom Balmforth and Alexander Tanas Reuters A knife-edge majority of 50.17% voted “yes” in Moldova’s pivotal referendum on joining the European Union, nearly final results showed on Monday, after President Maia Sandu said Sunday’s twin votes had been marred by “unprecedented” outside interference. The tight finish – with fewer than 1.5% of the ballots still to be counted – is far from a resounding endorsement of the pro-EU path that Sandu has pursued over four years at the helm of the small ex-Soviet republic tugged between Russia and the West. A presidential election, which took place simultaneously, handed Sandu 42% of the vote while her main rival, former prosecutor-general Alexandr Stoianoglo won 26%, setting up a tightly fought run-off between the two on Nov. 3. The votes, which took place after a slew of allegations of election meddling, were seen as a test of the southeast European nation’s commitment to join the European Union and escape Moscow’s orbit for good. The tight...

 Storm Nadine weakened to a tropical depression on Saturday as it chugged across Guatemala, after dumping heavy rain and bringing strong winds to neighboring Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The storm is expected to swirl across Guatemala and into Mexico’s southeastern states of Chiapas and Tabasco through early Sunday, a forecast from the U.S. National Hurricane Center showed. Nadine, moving west at about 13 mph (21 kph), was blowing maximum winds that had slowed to near 35 mph (56 kph), the NHC said. National Hurricane Center advisory made on October 19 In Guatemala, the nation’s disaster agency released a video of a river swollen with rain, threatening to spill its banks. It recommended some residents self-evacuate, while others should reinforce their roofs, doors and windows. Earlier in the day, strong winds were blowing as far north as 195 miles from Nadine’s center. The NHC’s tropical storm warning had stretched from Belize City to Mexican beach resorts Can...

By Dave Sherwood and Marianna Parraga Reuters Cuba restored a trickle of power to its grid by mid-evening on Friday, officials said, hours after the island plunged into a countrywide blackout following the  collapse  of one of its major power plants. The vast majority of the country’s 10 million residents were still in the dark on Friday night, but scattered pockets of the capital Havana, including some of the city’s major hospitals, saw lights flicker back on shortly after dark. Grid operator UNE said it hoped to restart at least five of its oil-fired generation plants overnight, providing enough electricity, it said, to begin returning power to broader areas of the country. The Communist-run government closed schools and non-essential industry early on Friday and sent most state workers home in a last-ditch effort to keep the lights on after weeks of  severe power shortages.  Recreational and cultural activities, including night clubs, were also ordered closed....

The U.N. envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, has floated the idea of dividing the territory between Morocco and the Polisario front as a solution to the near five-decades-old dispute, according to remarks seen by Reuters. The long-frozen conflict, dating back to 1975, pits Morocco, which considers Western Sahara its own territory, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front independence movement, which seeks a separate state there. Morocco says autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the most it can offer as a political solution to the conflict, while the armed Polisario Front insists on the holding of a referendum with independence as an option. In a briefing to the Security Council behind closed doors on Wednesday, de Mistura, a veteran Italian diplomat, said that partition “could allow for the creation on the one hand of an independent state in the southern part, and on the other hand the integration of the rest of the Territory as part of Morocco, with its sovereignty ov...

By Jay Deshmukh and David Stout AFP Israel announced on Thursday the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October 7 attack, calling his death a “heavy blow” to the Palestinian group it has been fighting for more than a year. The Israeli military said that “after a year-long pursuit”, troops “eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organisation, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip” on Wednesday. Hamas has not confirmed his death. “Today evil has suffered a heavy blow,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While the war was “not over yet”, Netanyahu said Sinwar’s death was an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas”. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that Sinwar was a “mass murderer… responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7”, while President Isaac Herzog hailed the killing of the militant leader behind “heinous acts of terrorism”. Israel accuses Sinwar of mastermindi...

By Elwely Elwelly and Maya Gebeily Reuters The commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards warned Israel on Thursday against attacking the Islamic Republic in retaliation for a missile barrage as its arch-foe stepped up its offensive in Lebanon against Tehran-backed Hezbollah. Fears of a wider Middle East  conflict  have grown as Israel plans its  response  to the Oct. 1 missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-allied militants. “We tell you (Israel) that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours,” Hossein Salami said in a televised speech, adding that Iran can penetrate Israel’s defences. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday about  Israel’s operations  in Lebanon and Gaza, aiming to avert a regional war. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials as part of a Middl...

 By Camillus Eboh and Ahmed Kingimi Reuters A fuel tanker overturned late on Tuesday in Nigeria’s northern state of Jigawa after the driver lost control of the vehicle, spilling petrol which exploded and killed at least 147 people, police and state emergency services said on Wednesday. The accident is one of the worst in recent times in Africa’s most populous nation, which is battling with widespread security threats and a cost of living crisis. Haruna Mairiga, head of Jigawa state emergency services, put the death toll from the accident at 147. Local police spokesperson Lawan Shiisu Adam said the tanker was travelling from the ancient city of Kano to Yobe State in the north, when the driver lost control near Majia town in Taura local government area, about 530 kilometers (330 miles) north of the capital Abuja, causing it to overturn and spill fuel. Item 1 of 4 A fuel tanker that overturned after the driver lost control of the vehicle and caused fatalities, according to police...

By Tom Balmforth Reuters Moldova’s citizens vote on Sunday in a presidential election and an EU referendum that come at a  pivotal moment  in the tussle between Russia and the West for the future of the poor, landlocked southeast European nation of under 3 million people. As the  war in Ukraine  rages to the east and turns the political and diplomatic spotlight on the former Soviet republic, it has accelerated its push to escape Moscow’s orbit and embarked on the long process of EU accession talks. Pro-Western president Maia Sandu hopes to advance her agenda by both winning a second term and securing a “Yes” in a referendum to affirm EU accession as a strategic goal in the constitution. Polls tip Sandu to win and suggest that a majority support joining the EU, while the government has accused Russia and its proxies of trying to influence the electoral process by paying tens of thousands to vote the other way. “It’s a calculated, large-scale effort aimed at desta...

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters Israeli military strikes killed at least 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters. Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house. Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed three houses in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, and the local civil emergency service said they recovered two bodies from the site, while the search continued for 12 other people who were believed to have been in the houses at the time. Eight others were killed when a house was struck in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. The Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help people wounded b...