International News

US President Donald Trump's administration has announced an expansion of secondary sanctions it can impose on entities and countries that maintain business ties with Iran around the world as Washington significantly ratchets up economic pressure on Tehran with the war nearing its six-month mark.

British police investigating a car crash in northeast England over the weekend that killed seven people, including two police officers, said on Monday they had arrested 12 people in a probe into organised criminal activity linked to the incident.

The United States removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, lifting what Damascus says was the last major impediment to investing in the country as Washington deepens ties to the new Syrian government.

A landslide at a landfill in Guinea's capital has killed 30 people, the government said on Sunday, after heavy rains overnight prompted the collapse of a massive mound of waste that engulfed nearby tents and shacks.

Ukraine wants peace but will not just give in to Russia at any price, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday in a defiant speech marking Independence Day celebrations.

New Zealand's coalition government will introduce a bill in parliament on Monday that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, and proposes fines of up to 10 per cent of a platform's global revenue for non-compliance.

Three teenagers were killed and another eight people, including seven children, were wounded after drone debris hit a private childcare centre in southern Russia's Krasnodar region overnight, Russian officials said.

A coach carrying high-school students from Germany crashed in the east of the Netherlands early on Monday, injuring eight people, who were taken to hospital, Dutch police said.

Four people are missing after torrential rain lashed southern and eastern Taiwan on Monday, closing offices and schools, with authorities bracing for a typhoon to hit the island later in the week.

Two Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday have killed at least two people, including a four-year-old boy, and wounded seven others, Palestinian health officials said, as Israel warned it would intensify strikes after what it said were launches of balloons, drones and kites from Gaza toward Israel.

Eleven bodies have been recovered by Tunisia's coastguard after a boat carrying Tunisian migrants sank at the weekend en route to Italy, with three others still unaccounted for, the National Guard said on Sunday.

Canada will impose tariffs on some US goods in retaliation for 50 per cent levies ordered by President Donald Trump on Canadian products, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday, after trade talks collapsed between the two neighbours.

India's maritime rescue agency lost communication on Saturday with a Panama-flagged cargo vessel that sank off the coast of eastern India, the Indian Coast Guard said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments published on Saturday that Kyiv had opened "Pandora's box" with its strikes on Russian economic targets, saying that Russia would hit back at Ukraine's "most sensitive economic sectors".

Israel said it targeted a "terrorist" in southern Syria on Saturday in what Syria's foreign ministry said was a drone strike on a civilian vehicle on the outskirts of Damascus in a "blatant" violation of its territory.

The European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism sent helicopters and firefighters to help Serbia fight a massive wildfire in a nature reserve in the northeast of the country, the head of the EU mission to Belgrade said on Saturday.

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday that starting September 8 Canada would impose tariffs on imports from the United States across a raft of sectors in retaliation for President Donald Trump's new 50 per cent tariffs that came into effect from midnight.

Several people have died after a collision near Middlesbrough in northeast England between a police car and a passenger car, the local police force said on Saturday.

Ukrainian drones killed at least 10 people in attacks against targets across Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including a warehouse owned by online retailer Ozon and an industrial facility, Russian officials said on Saturday.

At least 13 Tunisians are missing after a migrant boat sank off the Tunisian coast while sailing towards Italy, and two people were rescued, the head of a migrant rights group said on Saturday.

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance have agreed on Friday to a $400-million settlement to resolve the US Justice Department's allegations that the short-video app violated children's online privacy.

An 18-year-old man armed with a sword attacked students at a Swedish high school on Friday, killing one person and injuring three.

Turkey said on Friday it would seek an Interpol red notice for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a domestic criminal case linked to an attack on activists seeking to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

At least 16 people were killed and more than 130 wounded on Friday when two Russian drones struck a shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, authorities said.

Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan is medically fit and back in jail after being examined by a team of doctors in a hospital overnight, the country's information minister said on Friday.

More than 2,500 people have now died in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak, which is spreading exponentially in an area larger than France, senior United Nations Ebola coordinator Julien Harneis said on Friday.

An earthquake of magnitude 6.7 hit central Peru on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey said, although authorities reported no immediate casualties or damage.

At least 50 people, mostly children, died after an overloaded boat capsized on Thursday in Nigeria's northwest Sokoto state, witnesses said.

Eight people died after a charter plane crashed at a remote military radar site in western Alaska on Thursday, the US military's Alaskan Command said.

Australian police recovered the body of an 18-year-old hiker overnight from dense bushland in a remote national park near Sydney, authorities said on Friday, more than a week after she went missing.

Bangladeshi lawmakers elected veteran Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir as the country's new president on Thursday, making the longtime opposition figure the head of state after his party came to power in a major political transition.

Russian strikes have killed 16 people and injured more than 40 in Kyiv and the surrounding region on Thursday as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a failure by Ukraine's allies to replenish its stock of air defence missiles was costing lives.

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan plan to move back to Britain this month, six years after they stepped down from their royal duties and relocated to the US, a source close to the couple said.

South Korea's presidential office has condemned North Korea's launch of more than 10 short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday and ordered its military to maintain full readiness during ongoing joint exercises with the United States.

Seven people, including five Americans, were killed on Wednesday when the tourist helicopter they were flying in crashed in Kenya's Samburu county.

South Korea and the United States will cut short annual joint military drills to five days from 11 and scale back some field training, the allies said on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump ordered a substantial reduction in US participation.

At least 100 people were killed when a low-tech artisanal gold mine collapsed in the Central African Republic on Tuesday, a senior official at a local mining association said.

An Israeli airstrike killed nine Palestinians at a police station in Gaza on Wednesday, medics said, two days after US envoy Jared Kushner ended a trip to the region that failed to push forward Donald Trump's plan to end the war in the enclave.

Thai schools conducted active shooter drills on Wednesday, as authorities moved to strengthen security measures two weeks after a 14-year-old opened fire at a school and killed at least eight people.

At least 23 people died in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck on the BR-373 highway in Brazil's southern state of Parana in the early hours of Wednesday, the Federal Highway Police said.

At least nine people have been killed, including a child, in a fire at a hotel in India's eastern city of Kolkata on Wednesday, local police said.

A Russian drone strike on a minibus in Ukraine's southern city of Kherson has killed four people on Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said, in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as a "vicious" attack.

The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo now exceeds 5,000, government data has showed late on Tuesday, as health officials warn that response efforts are failing to contain the deadly disease.

Eight Israeli airstrikes have hit the Abu al-Duhur military airbase in northwestern Syria early on Tuesday, targeting the runway and storage facilities, Syria's state-run Ekhbariya said, citing a military source.

The death toll from the powerful 7.7-magnitude quake that struck Indonesia last Saturday has risen to 70.

Torrential rains have killed 10 people in China's southwest following a house collapse and a landslide, state broadcaster CCTV said on Wednesday, with tens of thousands also evacuated as a precaution.

Two students were killed in a shooting at a high school in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, one of them the gunman, officials said, in the second such incident in the country in less than two months.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ordered on Tuesday that former Prime Minister Imran Khan be moved to hospital from jail, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party said, meeting a longstanding demand of his party and family, who had raised concerns about his health.

A Russian missile attack has killed 10 people and injured a further eight in a village in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, the regional governor said on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump said on Monday Iran would not make the deal he thinks is needed to end a war with the US and should surrender as talks between the countries remained stalled.

The economic losses from a powerful earthquake that struck Colombia last week are expected to reach 30 trillion pesos ($9.58 billion), Colombia's President Abelardo De La Espriella said on Monday.

Donald Trump's envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner left Jerusalem on Monday without a breakthrough after two days of talks with Israeli and Hamas leaders over a stalled US plan to end the war in Gaza, with both sides standing firm on key demands.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday instructed the Pentagon to "substantially reduce" joint military exercises with long-term Asian ally South Korea, citing the cost of the drills and Seoul's refusal to take part in actions against Iran.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) replaced its social media head on Monday as part of an organisational reshuffle, the party said, weeks after youth-led protests amplified through social media forced the resignation of the education minister.

At least six people have died in an incident police suspect was triggered by a falling electricity pole that alarmed a crowd of worshippers at a temple in India's eastern state of Bihar, officials said on Monday.

Donald Trump's envoys met with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators in Cairo on Sunday, a diplomatic source said, in a bid to advance the US president's Gaza peace plan, even as Israel pressed on with airstrikes in the enclave.

Residents of villages in eastern Indonesia hit by a deadly earthquake that killed at least 54 people were awaiting aid on Monday as rescuers prepared to comb through collapsed buildings in search of people trapped beneath the rubble.

The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 2,325 people, government data showed on Sunday, surpassing the toll from the 2018-2020 outbreak to become the deadliest in the country's history.

A landslide in South Korea has killed one person and injured three, media reports said on Monday, as heavy rainfall lashed the country's southern region.

Twelve people have been killed and at least 10 injured after a Polish bus overturned at night on a motorway in eastern Hungary, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said on Sunday morning in a Facebook post.

Around 5,000 people have been evacuated after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake rocked eastern Indonesia, killing at least 53, blocking roads and causing landslides, authorities said on Sunday.

More than 180,000 utility customers have remained without power across Hawaii on Sunday afternoon after Hurricane Lala brushed the Big Island before being downgraded to a tropical storm.

An elderly couple died and several other people were injured on Sunday as fast-moving wildfires swept through the Greek island of Salamina west of Athens on the biggest holiday weekend of the summer, authorities said.

Pope Leo called on Sunday for an end to violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, amid a surge of attacks by militant settlers and a siege in the territory's village of Qusra.

Russia carried out a wave of airstrikes on Ukraine overnight, killing two people at a steel plant, and Kyiv launched a heavy drone attack on the Moscow region that killed one person and set ablaze a warehouse used by Russia's leading e-commerce retailer.

Powerful storms and floods have killed at least six people in the US state of Indiana, state officials reported on Saturday.

Hurricane Lala has approached Hawaii with strong winds and heavy rain on Saturday, leaving more than 40,000 utility customers without power across the state as the National Hurricane Center warned of "life-threatening" conditions.

Hopes of finding survivors of the earthquake that struck western Colombia five days ago were dwindling on Saturday, as more bodies were pulled from buildings that collapsed due to the 7.4-magnitude quake that left hundreds dead or missing.

At least 47 people were killed after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake and dozens of aftershocks struck off eastern Indonesia on Saturday, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said in its latest statement.

Kuwait and Bahrain on Saturday expressed their strong condemnation of the Iranian attack against vessels affiliated with the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

Yemen's Mocha port has suspended commercial and maritime operations after being hit by more than 25 missiles in Houthi attacks over recent days, the port's director said on Saturday.

Moroccan police arrested at least 111 people on Saturday as they tried to enter Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta, amid tightened security on both sides of the border after social media posts called for another mass migrant crossing.

At least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, Lebanon's health ministry said.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory and urged Americans to accept slightly higher gasoline prices as the cost of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Rescuers raced in Colombia on Friday to free four people from a collapsed hotel, a rare sign of hope nearly four days after one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the Andean nation in decades left hundreds dead or missing.

Yemen's government said Houthis fired six ballistic missiles at the Red Sea port of Mocha on Friday, killing at least four civilians.

France's top court on Friday blocked a bill banning social media access for under-15s, saying it infringed upon freedom of expression and delivering a setback for President Emmanuel Macron, who asked his government to rewrite the legislation.

Record rainfall in Japan stranded thousands of travellers at Tokyo's Narita airport on Friday, bringing floods to the surrounding area that disrupted transport, knocked out power to 20,000 homes and killed eight.

Wildfires in England and Wales have hit a record level, fire chiefs said on Friday, warning that rescue services were battling to keep up with rising risks a day after fires raced from tinder-dry fields to engulf houses on the hottest day of the year.

A tunnel under construction at a hydropower project in India's northern hill state of Uttarakhand collapsed overnight, leaving at least seven workers dead, officials said on Friday.

Luigi Mangione admitted in court on Friday that he fatally shot health insurance executive Brian Thompson and pleaded guilty to two federal charges of stalking the CEO with the intent to kill him.

An Air India Airbus dropped about 300 feet this month, injuring 24 people on board, after the aircraft registered a loss of hydraulic pressure that briefly left key flight controls unresponsive, according to a preliminary Airbus analysis reviewed by Reuters.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr confirmed on Friday that he would endorse a candidate for the 2028 presidential election, but said he had yet to decide who he would back.

A wildfire in Croatia driven by strong winds descended on the tourist town of Omis overnight, engulfing houses, forcing about 1,000 people to evacuate and injuring dozens, fire brigade and health officials said on Friday.

Flights at Catania airport in Sicily will remain suspended until early Saturday because of ash from Mount Etna's ongoing volcanic activity, which has forced hundreds of flights to be cancelled or rerouted over the past week.

Authorities in Germany ordered about 1,800 people to evacuate their homes in the early hours of Friday, after a wildfire in the western region spread towards a village close to the border with Belgium.

Three people have been killed and 17 others injured on Thursday following a fire that broke out from a helium cylinder explosion at Arabella Plaza Mall in Egypt's New Cairo.

A blast at a storage facility for petroleum products at the Netherlands' Rotterdam port killed one person and wounded six others on Thursday.

The US military has enough assets to maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday, adding ships could be rotated in and out of the region as needed.

A powerful explosion ripped through a munitions factory near the town of Colleferro, southeast of Rome, on Thursday, with the blast heard for kilometres around.

Colombia's President Abelardo De La Espriella has vowed on Wednesday to set up an emergency fund to help rebuild hospitals, schools, homes, and infrastructure destroyed by Monday's earthquake, which killed 265 and left nearly 500 people unaccounted for.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave her role at the end of the month, US President Donald Trump has announced on Wednesday, leaving the president without one of his most trusted advisers ahead of November's midterm elections.

Air India will begin mandatory substance testing for all pilots on Thursday, expanding checks beyond regulatory requirements days after a pilot involved in a serious mid-air incident tested positive for psychoactive substances, according to an internal memo.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup, a Japan-claimed island at the end of the Kuril chain near the island of Hokkaido, Russian media said on Thursday, a day after major naval drills and a missile firing by ally North Korea.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta has announced on Thursday it had taken down more than 750,000 accounts it suspected were held by Australians aged under 16 since a world-first ban on teen accounts, and promised more action.

The status of the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish territories is not up for discussion, Spanish officials have said on Wednesday, after Morocco's justice minister reiterated Rabat's sovereignty claims over the cities.

Donald Trump has been sued on Wednesday by two media entities seeking to shut down a new service that sells paid access to the US president's posts, including some that can move markets, on his Truth Social platform.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has announced plans to buy electric shock gloves for officers in the field, alarming rights advocates who have condemned the action of ICE during President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Colombian rescue teams raced on Wednesday to find survivors still trapped beneath collapsed buildings two days after a powerful earthquake left nearly 250 people dead.

Four crew members and two rescuers have been killed in an attack by Houthis on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Tuesday, Yemen's transport ministry said, while the US military said it struck a container ship attempting to sail toward an Iranian port.

China's strongest typhoon this year lashed wide swathes of the country, battering the capital with bouts of intense rain that flooded key roads and stranded vehicles, after setting new rainfall records in central and eastern provinces.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he secretly switched planes in Turkey last month at the direction of the US Secret Service, but that the plane he ultimately flew on was still more vulnerable than Air Force One.

Powerful storms have moved through the US Midwest on Tuesday, leaving at least two people dead and nearly a million without power, officials said.

At least 44 people died after a passenger ferry capsized in a lake in Zimbabwe on Tuesday, police said, roughly trebling an earlier estimate of the death count after more bodies were found.

Indonesian authorities rescued 172 people on Wednesday after a ferry travelling from the tourist island of Bali caught fire in waters off Lombok, officials said,as the search continued for any other missing passengers.

Rescue crews dug through mountains of shattered concrete in western Colombia on Tuesday, racing to find survivors after a powerful earthquake killed more than 250 people, according to estimates from local authorities.

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday toward the sea off the Korean Peninsula's east coast, South Korean and Japanese authorities said, days ahead of major joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington long denounced by Pyongyang.

A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death on Tuesday after a trial in absentia, convicting him of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest during the country's nearly 14-year war.

At least 14 suspected illegal miners were killed and eight injured when a mine dump collapsed in South Africa's North West province on Monday night.

Lebanon's parliament on Tuesday abolished the death penalty and replaced all existing death sentences with life imprisonment, the speaker's office said in a statement.

Russia on Tuesday freed a former American Marine who had been jailed in the country since 2022, US President Donald Trump said.

Democratic Republic of Congo has confirmed Ebola deaths have reached 2,011, the latest grim milestone in what health officials have described as the fastest-spreading outbreak on record.

US President Donald Trump has responded to Iran's conditions for a peace deal on Monday with his own demands that Iran pay compensation for people killed in wars, attacks and protests as discussions on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz continue.

Indonesia has stepped up efforts to contain forest and land fires across six priority provinces, deploying cloud-seeding aircraft to induce rain as authorities seek to slow the haze now spreading across the region, officials said.

At least 111 people were killed after a powerful earthquake struck western Colombia early on Monday, knocking down buildings across several cities and injuring 87 more, with still others trapped in the rubble.

Russian attacks killed six people and wounded 20 in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia early on Tuesday and also struck Kyiv, triggering fires in the capital, officials said.

Torrential rain and storms in Typhoon Dolphin's wake inundated several provinces in China's east, drenching the coastal region and flooding streets in Shanghai, where around 40 per cent of flights were grounded on Monday due to the weather.

Police in eastern India used tear gas, batons and water cannon to disperse thousands of youth protesters as they marched on the state legislature in Jharkhand state on Monday over alleged wrongdoing in civil service examinations.

China said a Long March 7A rocket carrying the ChinaSat-4B satellite failed after an in-flight anomaly following liftoff from the Wenchang space launch site in the southern island province of Hainan on Monday.

At least 13 people were killed and 39 injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on industrial and civilian targets in the city of Nizhnekamsk, authorities said on Monday, one of the heaviest civilian tolls in Russia in months.

The Yemeni military has announced early on Monday that seven people, including military personnel and civilians, were killed and 30 others wounded in a Houthi attack on the Red Sea port city of Mocha.

A gunman killed a Thai official inside a local government office on the capital Bangkok's outskirts on Monday, authorities said, days after a teenager's shooting spree at a school in the same province reignited debate over gun control.

The Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has raised the number of deaths to 1,887 and confirmed Ebola cases to 4,120 on Sunday due to the outbreak that was declared in the east of the country on May 15.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restated his rejection of Donald Trump's latest Gaza plan in televised remarks to his right-wing government on Sunday, even as Israel's military has effectively halted attacks in the territory under pressure from the US President.

A fire in Indonesia's Mount Bromo National Park in East Java that burnt 550 hectares (1,360 acres) has been extinguished, with no casualties reported.

Ukraine and Russia accused each other of lethal attacks on Sunday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow was targeting global food security by striking Odesa's seaport.

Israel's military on Sunday closed the West Bank village of Taybeh to nonresidents, saying it aimed to prevent growing attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers across the West Bank.

Captain of an Air India flight that suddenly lost altitude last week is undergoing further laboratory testing after an initial screening indicated a result requiring confirmation.

The death toll from a school shooting in Thailand rose to nine on Saturday, after police said a 12-year-old girl caught up in Friday's incident had died.

Typhoon Dolphin, the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China this year, made landfall on the country's eastern coast on Sunday, bringing torrential rain and strong winds and triggering warnings of flooding and landslides.

Five people were killed and 25 injured in a Ukrainian overnight drone attack on the Russian city of Belgorod, local authorities said on Sunday.

Thousands of residents in British Columbia were ordered to evacuate on Saturday as a fast-moving wildfire in western Canada nearly doubled in size overnight.

Spain's government said on Friday it would establish border controls for flights and ships from Italy from midnight on Saturday until September 7 in a dispute with the neighbouring country over irregular migration.

Typhoon Dolphin lashed Japan's southern Okinawa prefecture on Saturday, injuring five people and cutting power to 14,000 buildings, while China shut ports and ferry routes ahead of the storm's expected arrival on its east coast.

Russian strikes killed three people, including a child, in the region surrounding capital Kyiv on Saturday, an official said.

A Thai teenager killed at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok on Friday after fatally shooting his grandparents, police said, in the Southeast Asian nation's worst mass killing since 2022.

A US federal appeals court ordered President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday to stop construction on a $400 million ballroom on the site of the White House's demolished East Wing, dealing the Republican leader a major setback in a case testing his presidential authority.

Spanish police have dismantled what they described as one of the largest people-smuggling networks operating in the Mediterranean, believed to have brought more than 2,000 migrants into the country.

A bomb planted in a minibus wounded 14 people on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus on Thursday night, with some of the injuries so severe that they were taken for fatalities, an official said on Friday.

Spain's government expects to transfer some migrant minors from overcrowded reception centres in the North African enclave of Ceuta to the mainland within weeks, alleviating the migration crisis after last week's deadly border rush.

Morocco is ready to cooperate with Spain and other European partners on the return of unaccompanied minors who were among tens of thousands of migrants who crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, state news agency MAP reported on Thursday.

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile on Thursday towards the sea off the peninsula's eastern coast, South Korea's military said, the first such launch in more than 40 days after a series of weapons tests earlier this year.

A wildfire prompted an evacuation alert on Wednesday about 30 km (18.64 miles) from Vancouver, one of Canada's largest metropolitan areas, as blazes in Western Canada continued to spread due to dry and hot weather.

Israel said two of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon on Wednesday while Lebanese authorities said Israeli retaliatory attacks killed at least one person, a flare-up in violence that coincided with the latest round of talks between the two countries.

Italy took the unprecedented step of placing all its major cities on the highest level of health alert due to high temperatures on Thursday while Hungary turned off the lights at some of its best-known buildings to save energy as a heatwave maintained its grip on large parts of Europe.

Rescuers worked on Thursday to douse fires and clear debris in Ukraine's eastern city of Balakliia after Russian strikes on homes killed three overnight, authorities said on the Telegram messaging app.

Work to build Google's planned Indian data centre hub is in full swing, with a hillside above the site stripped to red earth and terraced into steps, but mounting opposition from environmentalists is creating hurdles for the US tech giant's $15 billion project.

An Arab ministerial meeting in Amman has called for urgent international action to halt Israeli violations in occupied East Jerusalem and at its holy sites.

The Israeli military said it had begun targeted strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday in response to a "Hezbollah violation", a day after the latest round of US-facilitated talks between ‌Israel and Lebanon took place in Rome.

Four men were stabbed in a street near London's Covent Garden district on Wednesday and a woman was arrested in what police said they believed to be a "mental health related incident".

The temperature in Austria climbed to a record high on Wednesday, while Hungarians curbed power use as the latest heatwave and drought took their toll on central and southern Europe.

US President Donald Trump said his administration had "very good discussions" with Iran during all-day negotiations on Tuesday, fuelling expectations of an imminent end to the five-month conflict.

The Democratic Party's progressive wing scored a high-profile victory when Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's US Senate primary, according to media projections on Wednesday, giving its anti-establishment message a boost ahead of November's midterm elections.

Bangladesh's former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Wednesday that a ban on her Awami League party should be lifted and reiterated that she would return to her country in December, challenging the new government of her rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

A SpaceX rocket piece floating in space since last year smashed into the moon at high speed early Wednesday morning, joining the ranks of meteoroids, wayward spacecraft and other pieces of space junk that have bombarded the lunar surface for ages, astronomers confirmed.

A projectile struck an Indian-flagged vessel near Yemen, causing it to capsize and sink, but all 14 seafarers on board were rescued, India's shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal said on Tuesday in a post on X.

Albanian firefighters battled on Wednesday a wildfire in the southern region of Mallakaster which forced evacuations of about 15 families with their livestock and pets as a heatwave kept large parts of southern and eastern Europe in its grip.

Russia fired dozens of ballistic missiles at Ukraine's capital Kyiv and the surrounding region on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people and destroying warehouses and logistics centres of major retailers, Ukrainian officials said.

An airplane's tyre burst on landing at Cape Town International Airport on Tuesday afternoon, causing flight disruptions as the main runway was closed though all passengers disembarked the plane safely.

Conflicting signals from the US and Iran over the status of talks to end their five-month-old war boosted uncertainty on Tuesday, with the latest attack on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz highlighting risks to global energy flows.

Russia said seven people, including three children, had been killed and 40 injured at its Black Sea holiday resort of Gelendzhik in what it said was a deliberate Ukrainian drone attack on civilians.

India's Gen-Z Cockroach Janta Party, whose recent protest against exam paper leaks claimed a rare ministerial scalp, has no immediate plans to enter electoral politics, its founder told Reuters on Tuesday.

Wildfires were easing in Greece on Tuesday though hundreds of firefighters were on alert for persistent flare-ups northwest of Athens, where rugged hills and canyons hampered efforts to fully contain a blaze that gutted homes and scorched forests, farmland and olive groves.

Testing of experimental treatments, preventive medicines and vaccines for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind Democratic Republic of Congo's ongoing outbreak is advancing rapidly, the UN's World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of deliberately starting one of three fires that have destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in and around Spokane, Washington.

The death toll ​from twin ‌earthquakes which struck Venezuela in June has risen to 6,125, ​according to figures released by top lawmaker ​Jorge ​Rodriguez on Monday.

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Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, will be boarding Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity and blasting off to space on Sunday.

Singapore is reviewing penalties for violent offences following an outcry over a 12-day prison sentence for a student who strangled his girlfriend until she blacked out.