Global News

Kosovo is heading for its third parliamentary election in over a year after lawmakers repeatedly failed to elect a new president, pushing the young Balkan nation into renewed political uncertainty. Parliament, which is tasked with choosing the president, on Tuesday faced a midnight deadline to choose a successor to Vjosa Osmani, whose term expired earlier this month. When it failed to do so, the legislature was automatically dissolved. The early election must be held within the next 45 days, but a date was not immediately announced. Political analyst Ilir Deda predicted that the election is likely to be held in June. The vote, Deda added, will test “whether people are willing to hold politicians accountable.” The small Balkan country of 2 million people has faced political turmoil since an election in February 2025 ended inconclusively. A new government of Prime Minister Albin Kurti was formed after an early vote on Dec. 28 but another crisis emerged over who should succeed Osmani...

Mali’s military leader on Tuesday insisted the situation in his country was “under control” as he made his first public address since unprecedented large-scale attacks at the weekend destabilised his ruling junta. Jihadists and Tuareg separatists are still positioned in the vast Sahelian country’s north, three days after launching a stunning wave of attacks, in what junta chief Assimi Goita acknowledged was a situation “of extreme gravity”. Goita had made no public appearance or statement for three days, fuelling doubts about his ability to cling to power, but on Tuesday evening — hours after jihadists threatened to blockade the capital Bamako — he made a speech to the nation on state TV. “As I am speaking to you, security arrangements have been reinforced. The situation is under control and clearing operations, search efforts, intelligence gathering and security measures are continuing,” he said. He urged the population to “stand up against division and national fracture”, saying ...

By Ahmed Kingimi Reuters Gunmen killed at least 29 people in ​an attack on a community ‌in Nigeria’s Adamawa state, the state governor said on Monday. The attackers invaded the community late on Sunday ‌and ​carried out sporadic ⁠shootings for several hours, ⁠killing residents and destroying property, according to local officials and community leaders. Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri ​confirmed the death toll during a visit to Guyaku ⁠community in Gombi ⁠local government area, where ​he condoled with bereaved families and ​described the incident as tragic ‌and unacceptable. He said the state government was working with security agencies to prevent further attacks ⁠and restore normalcy. The motive behind the attack is unknown. However, Adamawa, in northeastern ⁠Nigeria, ‌has in recent years ⁠suffered repeated attacks by ​Boko ‌Haram insurgents including armed ​groups and ⁠criminal gangs, contributing to rising insecurity across rural communities in the region. from The Times Of Ea...

Mali’s defence minister died after an attack on his house, his family said Sunday, as the army fought a second day of battles with jihadist fighters and separatist rebels near the capital Bamako and other cities, putting the Sahel nation’s ruling junta under severe pressure. Defence Minister Sadio Camara, his second wife and two of his grandchildren died after a car bomb attack on his home in the junta stronghold of Kati, outside Bamako, his family and an official said. Saturday’s shock attacks, synchronised by Tuareg rebels of the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) coalition and the jihadist Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), targeted several areas in the vast arid country. Fighting resumed Sunday in several areas, including Kati, Kidal, Gao and Severe. Tuareg rebels meanwhile announced an agreement allowing Russian forces backing Mali’s army to withdraw from the northern city of Kidal, which they claimed was “totally” under their control. “An accord has been reached p...

BY KONSTANTIN TOROPIN AP US President Donald Trump has been rushed out of the White House correspondents’ dinner at a hotel in Washington, DC, after a gunman fired shots and tried to breach security.   A man armed with guns and knives stormed the lobby outside the  White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner  attended by  President Donald Trump  on Saturday night, charging toward the ballroom in a chaotic encounter with Secret Service agents as guests dived under tables at the sound of shots being fired. The president was uninjured and was rushed off the stage. The armed man, who officials said was a guest at the Washington Hilton where the dinner was being held, was taken into custody and was expected in court Monday. Police believe he opened fire and acted alone but did not say who was his intended target or describe a motive. “When you’re impactful, they go after you. When you’re not impactful, they leave you alone,” Trump, safe and uninjure...

Russia and Ukraine on Friday swapped 193 captured soldiers each, the second exchange this month in one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv. The two countries have exchanged thousands of POWs throughout the four-year war — with the swaps often the only result of otherwise stalled talks on ending the conflict. “193 Ukrainian warriors are returning home as part of a prisoner exchange,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media. “We remember each and every one and continue working every day to bring our people home from Russian captivity.” AFP journalists at the scene of the swap in northern Ukraine saw dozens of exchanged Ukrainians pour off buses looking pale but relieved after long stints in Russian detention. They wrapped themselves in blue and yellow flags, embraced each other, or cried on the phone to loved ones. One of the servicemen, who identified himself to AFP only as Vadym, said that after three-and-a-half years in Russian detention h...

Tanzania’s electoral violence last year left at least 518 dead, a government-appointed commission said Thursday, giving a figure far below opposition estimates and failing to say who was responsible. While President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared to have won 98 percent of the vote in the October 29 election — in which key opposition figures were barred from running — the polls triggered days of protests around the country that were brutally suppressed by security forces. Opposition and religious groups say thousands were killed by security forces, while Western diplomats have given estimates between 1,000 and 2,000. Hassan sought to depict the protests as pre-planned and implied they were orchestrated by foreigners. “The commission has told us that all the violence was planned, coordinated, financed and executed by people with training and equipment for committing crimes and destruction,” she said after the report was presented. She argued that Africa’s internal wars were usuall...

By HARUNA UMAR AP Islamic militants attacked a remote village in northeastern Nigeria overnight, killing 11 people and leaving two critically injured, local officials said Wednesday. It was the latest violence in Africa’s most populous country that has long been battling a complex security crisis. The attack took place late on Tuesday in Pubagu, a community in a remote area on the fringes of Sambisa forest in Borno state, the epicenter of Nigeria’s long fight against an Islamic insurgency. Villagers said they buried the victims on Wednesday and attributed the attack to the extremist Boko Haram group. The local council chairman, Mwada Saidu Uba, told The Associated Press that the village had previously been considered a safe haven. “Pubagu is one of the locations in our council area that had never suffered such an attack until yesterday,” he said after the funerals. The two injured were receiving treatment at a nearby hospital, he added. Usman Rumirgo, a local ward official, said t...

By Ruma Paul and Sam Jahan Reuters Rohingya refugee Rahila Begum spent two days adrift in the Andaman Sea this month, clinging to a wooden shard after her overcrowded boat capsized, one of the few survivors of a disaster that ​left 250 missing and feared dead. She was among the thousands of Rohingya Muslims who brave hunger and accidents on rickety boats each year to flee desperate conditions in ‌camps in southeastern Bangladesh for countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Hundreds die en route from hunger or accidents at sea, but the numbers keep growing as shrinking food rations caused by dwindling international aid push yet more to make the dangerous crossing. “I never thought I would survive,” said Begum, her voice thready from fever and aches as she sat, wrapped in a blanket, on a thin mat in her parents’ shack thrown together from tarpaulin sheets. “It felt like the end ​of my life.” The 26-year-old was rescued by a passing Bangladeshi oil tanke...

Tigray’s main political party said it was taking back control of the region’s government, effectively voiding a peace deal with Ethiopia’s federal government that ended one of the century’s deadliest conflicts. The Tigray People’s Liberation ‌Front (TPLF) made the statement in a Facebook post on Sunday, accusing the federal government of violating the Pretoria Agreement, which ‌ended the two-year war. The statement said the government had provoked armed conflict within Tigray, withheld funds to pay regional civil servants and extended the tenure of the ​interim administration’s president without consulting the party. “It (the federal government) is in a hurry to launch a bloody war once again,” the statement said. The announcement prompted Getachew Reda, the party’s former spokesman and an adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, to write on X on Sunday that the TPLF’s statement constituted “a clear repudiation” of the post-war structure created by the Pretoria Agreement. “T...

A fire that tore through a Malaysian coastal settlement on Borneo Island destroyed about 1,000 homes and displaced over 9,000 people, authorities said. The fire started early Sunday in the Sandakan district and spread rapidly through rows of wooden houses constructed on stilts above the sea, according to the fire and rescue department. Officials said strong winds and the close proximity of the structures helped fuel the fire, while narrow access routes and low tide conditions made it harder for emergency crews to reach affected areas and contain the flames. No deaths have been reported, though thousands of residents have been forced from their homes and moved to temporary shelter. The cause of the fire has not been confirmed and remains under investigation. Water villages — informal settlements built over the sea — are found along much of the coastline of Sabah, one of the poorest states in Malaysia. The homes are tightly packed, made from combustible materials and often lack basic...

By HYUNG-JIN KIM and MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles toward the sea on Sunday, its neighbors said, days after the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog warned that North Korea was making “very serious” advances in efforts to build nuclear weapons. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches happened on Sunday morning from the Sinpo area, an eastern coastal site where North Korea has a major shipyard used for building submarines. South Korea’s military said it has bolstered its surveillance posture and is closely exchanging information with the U.S. and Japan. South Korea’s presidential office said its National Security Council plans to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the launches. Japan’s Defense Ministry also detected the launches, saying the weapons were believed to have landed in the waters off North Korea’s east coast. It said Tokyo strongly protested to Pyongyang, saying Sunday’s launches threaten regional and international pea...

Nearly 6 million people in Haiti are expected to face acute food insecurity in the coming ‌months, underscoring how gang violence, mass displacement and economic strain are ‌keeping the Caribbean nation in the grip of a deepening humanitarian crisis, according to ​a new assessment published on Thursday. About 5.8 million Haitians – more than half the population – are facing acute food insecurity, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said, with more than 1.8 million of them in the emergency phase ‌and in urgent need ⁠of food assistance. The crisis has been fueled by worsening insecurity, economic shocks and repeated disruption to markets and ⁠farming, the report said. Armed groups have expanded their control in parts of the country, while more than 1.4 million people have been displaced, straining ​food supplies ​and pushing vulnerable households deeper into ​hunger. The latest IPC projection is ‌slightly below an earlier estimate of 5.91 million people facing acut...

Overnight strikes killed three people including a boy in Ukraine and two children in Russia, officials from both countries said on Thursday. Moscow has fired hundreds of drones on its neighbour almost nightly since the beginning of the four-year war, with Kyiv regularly carrying out strikes within Russia in response to its attacks. “As a result of the enemy attack on the capital, two people died – a 12-year-old boy and a 35-year-old woman,” Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. Another person was killed in Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro, Oleksandr Ganzha, head of the regional administration posted on Telegram. Around 10 people were wounded in the attack, with a 40-year-old woman hospitalised in “serious condition”, Ganzha said earlier. It was not immediately clear if the hospitalised woman was the person reported dead. On the Russian side, two children were killed in the southern Krasnodar Krai region, its governor Veniamin Kondratyev said Thursday. “A terrorist...

Direct talks between Israel and Lebanon concluded in Washington on Tuesday, with Israel’s envoy hailing a “wonderful exchange” and saying the two countries are “on the same side” in opposing Iran-backed Hezbollah. “We enjoyed it together. We had a wonderful exchange of over two hours,” Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter told reporters following the talks. “We discovered today that we’re on the same side,” he said, adding: “We are both united in liberating Lebanon from (an) occupation power dominated by Iran called Hezbollah.” There was no immediate reaction from the Lebanese side. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who mediated the talks — had earlier urged the two countries to seize a “historic opportunity” for peace. “We understand we’re working against decades of history and the complexities that have led us to this unique moment and the opportunity here,” Rubio said at the State Department as he welcomed the ambassadors of the two countries. “The hope today is that we can out...

By Kyu-seok Shim Reuters North Korea conducted another test of strategic cruise missiles and anti-warship missiles on Sunday as part of operational efficiency trials ‌of its destroyer Choe Hyon, state media KCNA said on Tuesday. Leader Kim Jong ‌Un observed the test alongside senior defence officials and naval commanders, the report said. Two strategic cruise missiles and ​three anti-warship missiles were fired to check the warship’s integrated weapons command system, train crews in missile-launch procedures and verify the accuracy and anti-jamming performance of upgraded navigation systems, KCNA said. The cruise missiles flew for about 7,869 to 7,920 seconds and the anti-warship missiles for about 1,960 ‌to 1,973 seconds over waters ⁠off the country’s western coast, striking their targets with what the report described as ultra-precision accuracy. KCNA said Kim was briefed the same day on ⁠weapons system plans for two additional destroyers under construction, indicating preparati...

By Justin Spike and Sam McNeil, Associated Press Hungarian voters ousted long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Sunday after 16 years in power. The result is seen as a rejection of the authoritarian policies and global right-wing movement that Mr Orban embodied, in favour of a pro-European challenger in a bombshell election result with global repercussions. Election victor Peter Magyar, a former loyalist of Mr Orban who campaigned against corruption and on everyday issues such as health care and public transport, has pledged to rebuild Hungary’s relationships with the European Union and Nato — ties that frayed under Mr Orban. European leaders quickly congratulated Mr Magyar. It is not yet clear whether Mr Magyar’s Tisza party will have the two-thirds majority in parliament to govern without a coalition. With 77% of the vote counted, it had more than 53% support to 38% for Mr Orban’s governing Fidesz party. It is a stunning blow for Mr Orban, a close ally of both US President...

Russia and Ukraine on Saturday accused each other of violating ​a brief ceasefire in their four-year-old war hours into the truce put in place to mark Orthodox Easter. Governors of two Russian ‌border regions said Ukrainian drones had attacked targets in the Kursk and Belgorod regions, injuring five people. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had violated the terms of the 32-hour truce 469 times, including assault actions, shelling and drone strikes. The ceasefire, announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, went into effect at 4 ​p.m. Moscow time (1300 GMT). His Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he would abide by it. Reuters could not independently verify reports of military ​activity. The ceasefire was put in place as U.S.-led negotiations to reach a settlement have been halted amid the ⁠war in the Middle East. U.S. and Iranian negotiators were meeting in Pakistan on Saturday to try to end their six-week-old war. According t...

BY BABA AHMED AP Mali on Friday backed Morocco’s plan to offer autonomy to Western Sahara but establish sovereignty over the disputed region, endorsing a plan to end a decades-long conflict between the Moroccan government and the indigenous Sahrawi people. The Malian transitional government said Friday it was withdrawing its recognition of the pro-independence Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as part of its backing for the Moroccan plan, which has growing support from African allies, the Trump administration in the U.S. and most  European Union  members. In a statement released by the Malian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the government said “the Republic of Mali supports the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco as the only serious and credible basis for resolving this dispute and considers that genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the most realistic solution.” Western Sahara is a phosphate-rich stretch of coastal desert the size of Colorado that was under Spanish rul...

By Robbie Corey-Boulet Reuters The West African affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State have clashed in Niger for the first time, according to a ‌statement from one of the groups, a development that analysts said signals an ‌intensification of their years-long rivalry. Al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al‑Islam wal‑Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State in the Sahel Province (ISSP) engaged in ​their first skirmishes in 2019 and have since clashed hundreds of times, resulting in more than 2,100 deaths, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a conflict monitoring group. That fighting had unfolded exclusively in Mali and Burkina Faso until last week when ISSP fighters attacked a JNIM position in ‌the Tillaberi region of western Niger. In ⁠a statement dated Monday, ISSP said it had killed 35 JNIM operatives and seized weapons and motorbikes. It said the attack came on April ⁠2 in response to a JNIM attack on a village in Tillaberi. Human Rights Watch has previously ac...

By Conor Humphries and Padraic Halpin Reuters Protesters calling for further government help to lower the cost of fuel clogged up busy thoroughfares and motorways ‌with parked lorries and tractors across Ireland on Wednesday, disrupting commuters and public transport ‌for a second successive day. Convoys of vehicles began converging on Dublin’s city centre and other towns and cities on ​Tuesday, with protesters, including hauliers and farmers, complaining that a 250 million euro package to temporarily cut taxes on petrol and diesel did not go far enough to cushion the knock-on cost of the Middle East conflict. “With the price we’re paying for fuel, I’m probably two months away from my ‌business folding,” said Christopher Duffy, ⁠46, an agricultural contractor who was part of a group blocking Dublin’s main thoroughfare of O’Connell Street that is calling for the price of diesel ⁠to be capped at a lower rate. “It’s not a lot to ask for really… We’re just backed into a corner.” Minis...

By Kang Jin-kyu AFP North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said, hours after reporting an “unidentified projectile” launched from the North’s capital area the previous day. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has sought to repair ties with North Korea since taking office last year, criticising his predecessor for allegedly sending drones to scatter propaganda over Pyongyang. The launches follow Seoul’s expression of regret on Monday over civilian drone incursions into the North in January, with President Lee calling it “irresponsible” and noting that government officials had been involved in the operation. They are seen as North Korea’s latest rebuff of South Korea’s peace overtures, according to analysts. Seoul’s military said early Wednesday it had detected “an unidentified projectile” launched from the Pyongyang area a day earlier. About an hour later, the military said it also detected “multiple unidentified ballistic m...

By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman Reuters Four astronauts blasted off from Florida on Wednesday on NASA’s Artemis II mission, a high-stakes voyage around the moon that marks the United ​States’ boldest step yet toward returning humans to the lunar surface later this decade in a race with China. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with its Orion crew capsule,  roared to ‌life  just before sunset at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying its debut crew – three U.S. astronauts and a Canadian astronaut – into Earth orbit. The 32-story-tall space vehicle thundered into clear skies trailing a towering column of thick, white vapor. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the launch was an opening act for subsequent missions that would include construction of a moon base to support the “enduring presence we’re trying to create on the surface.” If the mission proceeds as planned,  the crew  consisting of ​NASA astronauts Reid Wis...