International News

China and North Korea have officially opened their most significant land border crossing, more than a decade after the bridge was completed.

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the fastest-growing on record, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen says it has intercepted and destroyed a drone over Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Region on Thursday.

Ukraine accused Elon Musk's SpaceX on Wednesday of limiting Starlink services, crippling its drones, as Russian missiles knocked out power stations in attacks President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called "ostentatious disrespect" to Donald Trump.

Kenya reported a second case of Ebola on Wednesday, about a week after recording its first ever infection of the viral disease when a Kenyan who had been living in Congo died in a Nairobi hospital on October 5.

Falling debris from two intercepted cruise missiles launched by Houthis has injured four people and damaged 15 homes, Saudi authorities said early on Wednesday.

An Indian court has ordered the detention of two leaders of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in jail for five days, the party said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Energy said an Aramco administrative building in Dhahran was targeted on Tuesday evening, causing a "limited" fire, with no injuries reported.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday six people had been confirmed dead in the state from Hurricane Isaias, which made landfall last week.

Yemen's Saudi-led coalition has reported carrying out an operation to neutralise the civilian resources and fuel sites used by the Houthis that supported their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Cornell University will ban parties and social events at fraternity houses until the end of the academic year, its president said on Tuesday, responding to the outcry over an alleged gang abuse on campus in 2024.

Pope Leo has been diagnosed with lung cancer after surgeons removed a part of his right lung on Tuesday, the Vatican said in a medical bulletin, marking a significant health setback for the 71-year-old pontiff.

Yemen's Saudi-led coalition said on Tuesday two ballistic missiles launched by Houthis toward Saudi Arabia's Khamis Mushait have been intercepted and destroyed, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Leaders of India’s “cockroach” youth movement have been detained on Tuesday after jumping barricades to enter a historic observatory in Delhi, chanting slogans demanding the resignation of the country’s election chief.

Prosecutors in the Philippines have dropped most of the charges against Vice President Sara Duterte, who is on trial in the Senate over claims of corruption and abuse of power. The Senate, which is acting as the court in the case, approved the move on Tuesday.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined a demonstration outside a high school in a working-class suburb of Paris on Tuesday as French pupils took to the streets for another day of protests over poor conditions.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay has urged the United States to return to its traditional role as a defender of human rights, amid a US campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Eight people were wounded in a stabbing at a supermarket in the South Korean city of Incheon on Tuesday, with one person suffering cardiac arrest, police said.

Much of Ireland's public sector is set to go on strike for the first time since the height of the country's financial crisis in 2009, after trade unions rejected a late bid by the government to avert the stoppage.

Pope Leo was due to be hospitalised in Rome on Tuesday ahead of surgery to remove a small growth on one of his lungs, in the first major health issue of his 17-month tenure.

NASA's robotic Perseverance rover has now driven farther than any other vehicle on the surface of any world other than Earth, racking up 45.2 km since arriving on Mars in 2021, the US space agency said on Tuesday.

The Saudi civil aviation has extended the suspension of operations at King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh on Monday following attacks on the facility.

Hundreds of opposition party demonstrators marched to India's Supreme Court on Monday to protest the removal of millions of names from voter lists that has sparked days of unrest in the Indian capital and challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Russia hit at least six energy targets during a night and morning of deadly airstrikes across Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday, adding this showed Moscow had no interest in an energy ceasefire announced by Donald Trump.

US academics Robert Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 Nobel economics prize on Monday for decades of work developing ground-up models currently used by central banks and finance ministries across the world to stabilise economies.

A French middle-school student shot and wounded a headteacher and a female staff member with a hunting rifle at a school near Marseille on Monday, the local mayor said.

Politicians from former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party have been detained after the federal government suspended a provincial government and imposed emergency rule.

Saudi Arabia's Civil Aviation Authority has reported the death of a resident, with 11 others injured following the attack on King Khaled International Airport on Sunday.

An Israeli strike has killed at least two Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, health officials said.

The death toll from floods in Thailand has risen to 71, with nearly 908,000 households affected across 51 provinces since mid-September, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.

Hurricane Simon has weakened to a Category 3 storm on Sunday as it moved parallel to Mexico's Pacific coast, bringing strong winds and heavy rain that flooded homes.

Panama has recorded more than 200 aftershocks following Friday's 7.7-magnitude earthquake that damaged hundreds of homes and infrastructure across the country's central provinces, prompting the government to declare a national state of emergency over the weekend.

North Korea has fired multiple ballistic missiles toward the sea off its east coast on Monday, South Korea's military said, in its latest weapons test amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Russian attacks have killed six people in two Ukrainian cities on Sunday, including a strike on a grocery store in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, where three people died and 20 were injured, officials said.

Yemen's Saudi-led coalition has announced on Sunday that authorities were responding to a fire that broke out at Terminal 4 of King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh after being targeted by an "unidentified projectile", according to the Saudi Press Agency.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to what he described as an "energy ceasefire", hours after Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pushed back against US pressure for a unilateral end to strikes on Russian refineries.

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said on Sunday morning that an attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday has killed 12 people and left 309 others injured.

Police have detained hundreds of protesters in Delhi for a second day on Sunday as sporadic protests broke out demanding India's election chief quit, and a court ordered the release of "cockroach" movement founder Abhijeet Dipke and two other senior leaders.

Polish police have detained a man suspected of planning an attack on Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the Interior Minister said on Sunday, after it warned earlier of a threat to Tusk and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz.

Four people have died after Hurricane Isaias made landfall early on Saturday, and about 670,000 residents in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi were still without power as the storm weakened to a post-tropical cyclone, according to local authorities and electricity monitoring services.

Police detained more than 2,000 protesters and the founder of the "Cockroach" youth movement in Delhi on Saturday as security forces locked down parts of the capital to thwart a rally demanding the resignation of India's election chief.

Operations at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh were suspended on Saturday after an attack on the airport caused injuries, the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement.

Pope Leo said on Sunday that doctors had detected a small growth on his lung during a recent health check and he would be undergoing surgery this week to remove it, in the first health scare of the 71-year-old pontiff's tenure.

British police said a man died on Saturday after he entered a tiger enclosure at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park and was attacked.

Nine people have been confirmed dead in Erie, Pennsylvania, authorities said, after what Governor Josh Shapiro called a "tragic mass shooting".

Twenty people, including three children, were killed in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday, a day after US President Donald Trump announced a deal to lift sanctions on Russian diesel in a major setback for Kyiv.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has cancelled the legislative elections scheduled for November, citing worsening conditions in the Palestinian territories, and set a date of September 11, 2027, for both the presidential and legislative elections, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake has struck near the southern coast of Panama on Friday at a depth of 10km, according to the US Geological Survey, yet no damage was initially reported, and the Panama Canal Authority said the waterway was operating normally.

US President Donald Trump's administration has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court on Friday, hours after one of its former judges won the Nobel Peace Prize, putting Washington on a diplomatic collision course with European allies.

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said on Friday that three Saudi nationals were killed and several people were injured in two attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Thursday.

Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who oversaw a UN report that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday "for her efforts to promote peace and international law".

Two Renoir paintings worth millions of dollars that were stolen from a museum on the French Riviera a month ago have been recovered, and six suspects have been arrested, the local mayor said on Friday.

Hurricane Isaias is strengthening as it heads for the US Gulf Coast, prompting evacuations in Florida and shutting in more than half of the coast's oil production.

Polish police have arrested a string of young people, mainly for making threats related to school attacks, they said on Friday, as authorities sought to calm fears spurred by rumours online of a "Bloody Friday" after two stabbing sprees in as many days.

The leader of India's "Cockroach" youth movement said a major planned protest would go ahead in New Delhi on Saturday, despite the detentions of followers he estimated to run into the thousands, calling for the resignation of the top poll official.

The US government is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and several large IT firms from a programme that allows skilled foreign workers to gain permanent residency, senior US officials announced on Thursday, citing alleged fraud, and as part of an effort to push companies to hire more Americans.

Debris from a ballistic missile launched by the Houthi militia caused material damage to a kindergarten and a medical clinic complex in Riyadh after the missile was intercepted and destroyed, Saudi authorities said on Thursday.

Indian authorities started mass detentions of people associated with the 'Cockroach' youth movement, the group said Thursday, just days ahead of a major planned protest in Delhi to demand the resignation of the nation's top poll official.

A Russian bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 33 people, authorities said on Thursday, describing it as a targeted strike on civilians in the key stronghold sought by Moscow.

Canadian poet and writer Anne Carson won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature," the award-giving body said on Thursday.

A 15-year-old former student killed one person and injured two others at a Polish primary school on Thursday, police said, just a day after a 19-year-old wounded 10 people, including himself, in an attack at another school.

French teenagers blockaded some high schools and prepared to rally again on Thursday after the government promised to address their grievances about teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings but gave no specific details.

Three people were killed and several others injured in separate attacks targeting Abha International Airport and King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia on October 6 and 7, according to the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA).

Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are expected to face new criminal charges in the United States over allegations that Americans detained in Venezuela were tortured, a US official said on Wednesday.

Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones in one of its most "vile strikes" on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, killing at least 32 people, including children, and damaging industrial facilities and energy infrastructure.

Scientists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving a long-standing riddle of how to form a single molecular mirror image, a discovery hugely important for pharmaceutical manufacturing, the award-giving body said on Wednesday.

Ten people were injured in a knife attack at a school in Ostroleka in northeastern Poland on Wednesday, with police detaining the 19-year-old suspect, who was among those hurt, shortly after the incident.

Israelis will on Wednesday mark three years since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a military assault that destroyed much of Gaza, where conditions remain dire despite a year-old ceasefire that is meant to halt the war for good.

Two missiles launched by Houthis have targeted the international airport of Yemen's southern port city of Aden early on Wednesday, but no casualties were reported, the media office of Aden's security department said.

Emergency crews on Tuesday have rescued the 23-member crew of a Liberian-flagged tanker, the Aframax Rio, which was set ablaze off Russia's Black Sea coast after coming under attack from an unmanned vessel, the Russian Transport Ministry said.

Kenya confirmed its first Ebola case on Tuesday after a Kenyan citizen who had travelled from Democratic Republic of Congo died in Nairobi.

British police arrested a 22-year-old British man in London on Tuesday as part of an investigation into a suspected plot that US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said involved a potential Iranian drone attack on a key airbase.

Former German spy chief August Hanning was detained on Tuesday on suspicion of attempted treason in a case that ranks among Germany's biggest intelligence scandals since the Cold War.

Students, teachers and parents marched in cites across France on Tuesday and protesters blockaded hundreds of schools, in the biggest day of action in a wave of demonstrations demanding the government tackle understaffed and dilapidated classrooms.

Belgian-American particle physicist Francis Halzen won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for ground-breaking work creating an observatory to detect some of the universe's most elusive particles, high-energy neutrinos, and how they are created.

Saudi Arabia's airports in Jazan and Najran were targeted in two attacks on Monday evening, injuring three people and causing limited damage, the Saudi aviation authority said, as hostilities between the kingdom and Houthis escalated.

Dozens of Indian opposition lawmakers began a march on Tuesday seeking the resignation of the election chief over a controversial revision of voter lists, as hundreds of security personnel kept vigil in the heart of the Indian capital and barricades were thrown up.

Cornell University students have staged a mass rally on Monday, voicing solidarity with a classmate whose gang-abuse allegations have ignited a national uproar and demanding that the Ivy League school take firmer action against sexual abuse on campus.

A laboratory worker at a plague research institute in Siberia has fallen ill and died in undisclosed circumstances, prompting authorities to quarantine dozens of people and the head of Russia's health watchdog to fly to the Irkutsk region.

American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for developing optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain.

A Nigerian military plane flying from Benin City to Lagos crashed on Monday in southwestern Ondo state, killing 25 passengers and seven crew members.

At least 22 people have died after two boats collided on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called an early election for November 29 on Monday, in a bid to strengthen his mandate after a fragmented parliament rejected the government's key housing decrees last week amid widespread protests.

Hundreds of French high schools will begin a second week of closures on Monday as protests over dilapidated schools and classrooms, overcrowding and teacher shortages precede a nationwide day of demonstrations on Tuesday.

Thousands of supporters of Pakistan's jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan have started a long march to Islamabad to demand his release, his party said on Monday, amid deep divisions with the Pakistani leadership.

The United States has removed its B-1 bombers from a British air base one week after five men were arrested nearby on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, a suspected plot that British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said was likely backed by Iran.

A court in Oman has sentenced two tourists to a month in prison for sitting on nesting turtles at Ras Al Had reserve and posting a video on social media.

The US Coast Guard has halted its search for six people who were on a medical transport aircraft that crashed off the coast of Massachusetts' Nantucket Island.

Right-wing Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro will face leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a runoff of the presidential election later this month, after he exceeded expectations in Sunday's first-round vote with a slight lead over the incumbent.

Germany will not be intimidated into dropping its support for Ukraine, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday as he announced a further €1 billion ($1.1 billion) in military aid during a visit to Kyiv marked by Russian drone attacks.

Thousands of youth protesters and opposition supporters rallied in Delhi and Mumbai on Sunday to demand the resignation of India's election commission chief over changes to voter rolls, as police detained some demonstrators for a third day.

The US Coast Guard said late on Saturday it found debris from a medical transport aircraft off the shore of Massachusetts' Nantucket island and was searching for six people who were on board.

US President Donald Trump has appointed Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the administration's AI czar, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing an interview with Clayton.

US President Donald Trump shared online the supposed phone number of a Republican US senator in the first of multiple posts on Saturday in a row over making daylight saving time permanent.

An Asian expat was injured after shrapnel from an intercepted ballistic missile fell in Ahad Rafidah governorate in the Asir region, Saudi Arabia's state news agency reported.

An Israeli airstrike killed at least five Palestinians in an apartment building in Gaza City early on Saturday, health and civil defence service officials said.

A man appeared to lose control of a car that drove into a ​crowd in the Australian city of Newcastle on Saturday, injuring nine, authorities said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced renewed pressure on Friday as the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party and a separate coalition of student and activist groups stage fresh protests, demanding the resignation of the elections commission chief over a controversial voter roll revision.

The number of deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak has surpassed 4,000, government data showed on Friday, as the worst epidemic in the country's history resists containment efforts.

About 400 schools in France are expected to remain closed on Friday after student protests that began over education-related grievances escalated into violence in some places.

Yemen's armed forces spokesperson said on Friday its warplanes carried out around 40 precision strikes targeting Houthi movements, reinforcements, gatherings, personnel, vehicles, and military equipment in Taiz province.

The Arab League has condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by more than 1,300 Israeli settlers and the performance of religious rituals in its courtyards, warning against attempts to alter the mosque’s established historical and legal status quo.

Organisers scrapped a final high-profile debate in Brazil's presidential election on Thursday after both frontrunners, leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, opted to skip the event.

At least 15 workers were killed when an avalanche buried a mountain camp they were preparing in central Nepal for foreign climbers, a rescue official said on Thursday, in the deadliest incident of the autumn climbing season ending this month.

A SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida on Thursday with a crew of two US astronauts, a Canadian astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the International Space Station (ISS) for a science mission devoted to human health and performance in orbit.

An Indonesian police spokesperson said on Thursday the captain of a ship that capsized in the Java Sea last month has been arrested and will face criminal charges for his role in an accident that killed at least 78 people.

Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo, his wife and several others were killed on Wednesday in a helicopter crash, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said.

Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee's effort to execute her by means of lethal injection late on Wednesday, prison officials said, foiling the state's first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries.

A Russian drone tore through a school in Ukraine's capital, authorities said on Thursday, the latest in a spate of worsening air attacks on Kyiv.

Dozens of people have been injured and hundreds arrested, most of them teenagers, officials said, in a wave of French student protests against teacher shortages and dilapidated buildings that on Wednesday spread to more schools across the country.

Bangladesh enters October facing a worsening dengue outbreak after its deadliest month this year, as experts warned that weather conditions could fuel further spread, piling pressure on hospitals already fighting the world's worst measles outbreak.

US forces have withdrawn from their remaining bases in Iraq on Wednesday, raising fears they will leave behind a security vacuum.

Russian drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and nearby areas killed four people, damaged energy infrastructure and shrouded the capital in smoke, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.

A shark stranded in a canal in the South Korean port of Busan has become the country's latest wildlife sensation, with the city saying about 600,000 people have flocked to see it over the past two weeks.

Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians in two separate attacks in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the territory's health officials said.

Norway's parliament begins public hearings on Wednesday on ties between late convicted US financier Jeffrey Epstein and Norwegian diplomats and politicians in a scandal that has shaken the nation's elite.

King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri on Tuesday as Morocco's first woman prime minister after her liberal-centrist party came out on top in a September 23 parliamentary election, the royal palace said.

US President Donald Trump said he has offered Iran nothing to end the war, rejecting media reports that cited US officials saying he was willing to ease sanctions and release frozen funds for "concrete" steps regarding Iran's nuclear programme.

The death toll from rains and flooding in Thailand has risen to 23, authorities said on Tuesday, as waters receded from the hard-hit capital Bangkok, where its main airport operated in chaos, and the government approved a multi-million aid package.

A former television news anchor was crowned king of Uganda's Tooro Kingdom on Tuesday, becoming the 13th monarch of the Batooro people in a ritual-laden coronation that ended a succession dispute.

SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time on Monday despite having one of its engines shut down unexpectedly, overcoming a hitch mid-flight to deploy its first batch of new Starlink satellites in a truncated mission ending hours earlier than originally planned.

An Indian court on Tuesday quashed the food regulator's order to stop Austrian beverage firm Red Bull using the label "energy drink" on its cans, saying the decision had been taken without allowing the company to explain its position.

British police said on Monday they were investigating whether individuals acting for a foreign state were involved in an apparent plot to attack an airbase used by the United States but said five suspects they had arrested would be released on bail.

At least 11 people were killed on Monday in Haiti's central Artibonite region by gang members after a deadly security operation, the local mayor said.

Thousands sheltered on Monday in evacuation centres in the Thai capital, parts of it still flooded after havoc brought by intense weekend rain, while swelling reservoirs in an eastern province triggered orders for more to leave their homes.

Heavy rain and storms have triggered floods and landslides that killed 56 people in India, while in Nepal, 14 have died and another 11 are missing, with authorities warning on Sunday that more flash floods are possible.

The death toll from an Indonesian ship that capsized earlier this month rose to 66 as of Monday, as divers braved leaking fuel and dangerously unsound structures to find the 69 passengers still missing on the 16th day of the search.

The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo has risen above 8,000 for the first time in the Central African country's ongoing outbreak, government data showed on Monday.

India's Supreme Court questioned on Monday why the government wanted to "waste so much time" on fresh public and industry consultations before adopting warning labels on packaged items, in its latest push for swifter action on food labelling.

British police arrested five men near a US air base on suspicion of explosive and terrorism offences on Sunday after a tip-off that three vans had been heading to the military airfield which has been used to strike Iran.

AI requires safeguards that go beyond self-regulation, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in an interview that aired on Sunday, calling for legislation to be passed in Congress.

Russian drones set ablaze a market outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Sunday, killing two people, while three others died in strikes by Moscow's forces in different regions and Kyiv itself also came under attack, local officials said.

South African police were on Sunday hunting the perpetrators of two separate shootings that killed 27 people within hours of each other, in stark reminders of the country's problem with gun violence.

Afghanistan's defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had killed 28 fighters and wounded 32 in the eastern province of Nuristan after a group it said included IS rebels crossed from Pakistan.

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he had rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end fighting in the Middle East.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has dismissed Defence Minister Dauren Kosanov, according to a presidential decree, several days after 14 servicemen were swept out to sea and died during a training exercise.

Floodwaters receded across parts of Bangkok on Sunday after a break in torrential rain that caused severe flooding a day earlier and prompted authorities to declare the Thai capital a disaster zone.

Four people have been killed in a helicopter crash southeast of Montreal, police said on Saturday afternoon.

Yemen's Saudi-led coalition said early on Saturday it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and two drones launched by the Houthis towards the kingdom.

Eleven people were killed and 30 injured in a blast in Dera Ismail Khan in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, emergency service Rescue 1122 said.

Two people have died and another four are missing after a residential building collapsed following an explosion in a tourist area of central Athens, a Greek fire brigade official said on Saturday.

US television networks resumed coverage of President Donald Trump’s White House events on Friday, providing the first live pool access for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit, as a legal battle continues over restrictions on CNN, MS NOW and Politico.

The World Health Organization said on Friday that the Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to two additional health zones, bringing the total number affected to 63 across seven provinces.

Thirteen people, including three army officers, were killed on Friday when a military plane crashed in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Authorities in Kazakhstan have detained five Defence Ministry officials including the first deputy navy commander, a day after 14 servicemen were swept out to sea and died during a training exercise.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping drank tea at the White House on Friday and visited the National Archives, capping a three-day summit that showcased personal diplomacy rather than big breakthroughs in economic relations.

Five people were missing on Friday after an explosion caused a residential building to collapse in a touristic area of central Athens, injuring three people and damaging houses, shops and cars across a historic neighbourhood.

France will send troops and defence systems to Saudi Arabia to help protect the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, which is key for energy transport, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned that the Palestinian economy is currently facing “the most severe economic crisis recorded anywhere in the world", with an estimate $71.5 billion needed for recovery.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mounted a forceful defence of Israel's actions in the region at the UN, seeking to counter growing international isolation ahead of elections he could lose, as dozens of delegates streamed out.

US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday for a lavish state summit expected to be heavy on symbolism but light on substance, with both leaders keen to showcase stable ties despite a host of thorny issues.

Jailed former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has asked a court to suspend a 15-year prison sentence imposed on him for his involvement in a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal, his lawyer said on Friday, a week after he received a royal pardon on a separate conviction.

The leaders of India's "cockroach" youth movement said on Thursday that they would launch nationwide protests if India's chief election officer does not resign within 48 hours, after a newspaper report said he had been questioned by his deputies over changes to voter lists.

Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine's capital Kyiv and its northeast killed eight people on Thursday in attacks that included a maternity hospital and a farm, officials said.

The White House said on Thursday it has reinstated journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico after a federal judge deemed US President Donald Trump's ban of the three news outlets likely unconstitutional and ordered their access immediately restored.

ഇന്ത്യ സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തിന്റെ 75-ആം വാർഷികം ആഘോഷിക്കുന്നു

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.