Global News

By Steve Holland, Parisa Hafezi and John Irish Reuters and Posted by TOE The United States and Iran signalled on Friday that an agreement to end their war was close, with a senior U.S. administration official saying both sides had agreed on a text and that Washington expects to sign an initial deal in the coming days. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said changes were still ‌possible, but the tentative agreement showed his country had emerged stronger from the conflict. “Iran is the winner of the war with the U.S.,” he said on state television. The proposed memorandum of understanding calls ‌for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports, sources on all sides of the talks said. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program — U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated rationale for starting the war — would take place afterward. The U.S. official, speaking on condition ​of anonymity, told reporter...

 By Stephen Feller UPI and Posted by TOE President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he cancelled new U.S. strikes in Iran because Iranian leadership, and other regional powers, have approved “final points” in a deal to end the war. Trump said in a mid-afternoon post on Truth Social that he cancelled military strikes that were announced on Wednesday because the United States, Iran, Israel and other Middle Eastern nations reached an agreement. The United States on Wednesday had launched airstrikes in Iran and that it planned to hit the country “very hard,” Trump had said, and would seize Kharg Island, where 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports are shipped from. A shaky cease-fire had held in the three-month-old conflict, occasional skirmishes and blockage of the Strait of Hormuz aside, for weeks until Iran carried out a “powerful assault” on U.S. military assets Tuesday, which prompted Trump’s now jettisoned threat of new, larg...

By Reuters and Posted by TOE Armed bandits in northwest Nigeria abducted dozens of villagers whom they invited to a meeting ‌about potential peace negotiations, authorities and residents said on ‌Monday, highlighting the region’s worsening security. Police said 39 people were seized on Sunday ​when they went to a meeting in the forest near Magamin Diddi village in the Maradun municipality of northwest Zamfara State. Some local residents and officials said the number could be as ‌high as 50. According to ⁠a Zamfara State Police Command statement, the victims were meeting relatives of a bandit leader in ⁠an attempt to broker peace and ease restrictions on movement imposed on the community. Zamfara is at the centre of a long-running security ​crisis in ​which armed groups, locally referred ​to as bandits, carry ‌out mass kidnappings, killings and village raids. The violence has disrupted farming and displaced thousands. Security forces have deployed personnel and...

By Fatos Bytyci Reuters | Posted by TOE Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti called for cooperation from other parties to end 18 months of political deadlock after his Vetevendosje party came out top in a parliamentary ‌election on Sunday but failed to secure enough votes to govern alone. The tiny Balkan state wants to ‌join the European Union, and Brussels says it needs to create strong institutions capable of delivering reforms needed for membership. But political instability has left Kosovo ​without functioning institutions, delaying reforms and the flow of EU funds, and political analysts said the impasse looks likely to continue. Vetevendosje had 43% of votes after 99.4% of ballots were counted in Sunday’s election, the third in less than 18 months, official results showed. The Democratic Party of Kosovo was on 21% and the Democratic League of Kosovo was on 18% following the election, ‌called after Kosovo’s fractured parliament failed to ⁠elect a speaker a...

By Reuters and Posted by TOE The Israeli military has struck Hezbollah infrastructure in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut, known as ‌Dahiyeh, the first strike on the militant group’s stronghold since ‌an April 16 ceasefire was brokered. The ceasefire has not halted the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah ​in southern Lebanon, with Israel saying it is working to dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure on its borders. Hezbollah has rejected proposals linking a ceasefire to its disarmament, saying Israel must first halt its attacks and withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. In ‌a joint statement with ⁠his defence minister, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strike on Dahiyeh was ordered in response to Hezbollah firing ⁠toward Israeli territory. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The military said earlier it had intercepted two projectiles that crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon, after sirens sou...

By Mariam HARUTYUNYAN, with Irakli METREVELI in Tbilisi AFP and Posted by TOE Armenia voted Sunday in a parliamentary election set to test Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s tilt to the West, as the country faces threats and allegations of interference from former imperial ruler Russia. Armenia and Russia are technically allies, but Moscow has compared the former Soviet republic’s EU ambitions to the same path it claims triggered its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The election comes after years of upheaval since Pashinyan was propelled to power in a 2018 street revolution. The small Caucasus country is still reeling from long-time foe Azerbaijan’s military takeover of the Karabakh region. The conflict came to an end in 2023, when Azerbaijan’s army seized control of the enclave, and most of the Armenian population fled. Pashinyan has framed the vote as a choice between a lasting peace with Azerbaijan, or a return to war. The 51-year-old has a...

By Ahmed Elimam, Jana Choukeir and Phil Stewart Reuters U.S. forces struck Iranian coastal radar sites on Saturday after shooting down drones launched by Iran toward the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. military said, in the latest escalation complicating efforts to end the war between the two countries. The U.S. military believes the four Iranian drones were targeting regional maritime ‌traffic, a U.S. official told Reuters. U.S. Central Command said on X that the U.S. then struck Iran’s surveillance sites in Goruk and Qeshm Island, which are both on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s ‌foreign ministry said the U.S. action broke an April 8 ceasefire, adding that repeated such violations showed Washington had no intention of reducing tensions. It warned that the United States would bear responsibility for the consequences of its “illegal actions” and any further escalation. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard ​Corps said it had attacked U.S. bases in Kuwait an...

By AFP and Posted by TOE Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Russia early Saturday, leaving one person dead and setting an oil depot ablaze on the final day of the country’s flagship economic forum in Saint Petersburg, officials said. Many of the drones targeted Saint Petersburg itself, the second Ukrainian attack on the city in less than a week, with Ukraine’s SBU security services saying it had hit a naval base. Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fifth year, remain stalled and sidetracked by the conflict in the Middle East. The strikes come a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal for a meeting, drawing criticism from Zelensky, who accused him of “choosing war again”. Russian air defences intercepted a total of 376 drones over the regions of “Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga...

By AFP and Posted by TOE Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in a rare open letter to the Russian leader Thursday, shortly after the Kremlin chief had conceded Moscow needed to strengthen its air defences amid a spate of Ukrainian attacks. The Kremlin said Putin had not yet been shown the letter, but that Zelensky could meet Putin in Moscow “any time” — a proposal that the Ukrainian leader preemptively ruled out in his letter. “Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us — and you. I am proposing a meeting,” Zelensky said in the letter. “I propose to set a clear date for such a meeting,” he said. “Ukraine is ready for a full ceasefire for the duration of the negotiations,” he added. Zelensky published the letter a day after Ukrainian drones hit Saint Petersburg, Putin’s home city hosting a major international economic for...

By AFP and Posted by TOE Heavy gunfire rocked Somalia’s capital overnight, with smoke rising over the city and armed forces deployed on the streets on Thursday, AFP journalists reported, after clashes erupted between rival political factions ahead of planned protests. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud plunged Somalia into a fresh political crisis in mid-May after announcing a one-year extension of his term, which had been due to expire on May 15. The opposition and regional leaders have rejected the move and demonstrations against it were due to take place in Mogadishu on Thursday. But as opposition leaders came to the city ahead of the protests on Wednesday, clashes broke out and continued sporadically through the night, according to AFP journalists and witnesses in the area. “We did not sleep throughout the night because of sporadic gunfire,” said Xalimo Salad, a resident of Mogadishu’s Howl Wadaag district adding that “more intense gun...

By AFP and Posted by TOE A drone strike on a passenger terminal in Kuwait’s international airport wounded several people Wednesday and forced air traffic to be suspended, as Iranian and US forces traded attacks in the Gulf. The attacks marked one of the more severe tests yet of a fragile April 8 ceasefire, that has largely held despite sporadic strikes after more than a month of war sparked by the US and Israeli attack on Iran. Kuwaiti officials blamed the attack on the airport on Iran, whose Revolutionary Guards accused US forces of triggering the night’s sequence of attacks by targeting a communications tower on the country’s Qeshm Island, forcing it to respond. But, with Bahrein also complaining of an overnight drone attacks from Iran, the United Arab Emirates attempted to rally its Gulf neighbours in opposition to Tehran. “In light of Iran’s repeated aggression against the sisterly states of Kuwait and Bahrain, a firm, unified, and ...

By Andrew Osborn Reuters | Posted by TOE – President Vladimir Putin has read long-term ally Armenia the riot act: persist in wanting to join the European Union and you can kiss goodbye to cheap Russian oil and gas. The Russian leader issued the warning before a parliamentary election in Armenia on Sunday, which polls ‌suggest the party of Western-leaning Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will win. It is not an empty threat. Armenia, a landlocked country of 3 million with centuries-old ties to ‌Russia, is highly dependent on Moscow, which has imposed temporary bans on important Armenian exports before the vote. But Putin’s words also reflect an uncomfortable truth for Moscow. Waging war in Ukraine with no end in sight after more ​than four years of fighting, Russia is mounting an intensifying and increasingly complex rearguard action around the world to try to retain its geopolitical clout. While Moscow focuses resources on the war in Ukraine, the European ...

By Laila Bassam, Maya Gebeily and Hatem Maher Reuters | Posted by TOE Lebanon announced a partial ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel on Monday in what would amount to a limited de-escalation of a conflict that has killed thousands of people and inflamed the broader U.S.-Israeli ‌war with Iran. According to Lebanon’s embassy in Washington, the agreement would not end the conflict in that country. But it calls for Israel ‌to refrain from strikes on Beirut and its suburbs controlled by Hezbollah, while the Iran-aligned group would halt its attacks on Israel. Hostilities in southern Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March, continued on Monday ​evening. Early on Tuesday, the Israeli military said that it intercepted two projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel, and that no injuries were reported. U.S. President Donald Trump, who first announced the agreement, said Hezbollah, through intermediaries, had pledged not to attack Israel. No U.S. presid...

By Don Jacobson UPI and Posted by TOE Fifty-five people were killed, including six children, in an accidental detonation of mining explosives in a rebel-held area of Myanmar, the armed group said Sunday. The Palaung Self Liberation Front/Ta’ang National Liberation Army, also known as the PSLF/TNLA, said  in a statement  that many others were also hurt in the blast, which happened Sunday afternoon local time in northern Shan State. Rescuers told  the Shwe Phee Myay News Agency the entire village of Kaung Tat in Namkham Township had been virtually destroyed and that “dozens” had been injured in the disaster. Local officials have sent out an urgent call for blood donations as emergency workers tried to free victims trapped in rubble. The PSLF/TNLA confirmed that many homes in the village were damaged when soft gunpowder stored for mining operations accidentally exploded at around 12:30 p.m. The fatalities included 25 females and 30 ...