By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas CAIRO/GAZA, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Gaza rescuers on Wednesday searched through the wreckage of a bombed-out apartment building that collapsed overnight, killing at least 20 Palestinians including children and trapping dozens of others beneath the rubble. Tens o
DAMASCUS, Sept 16 – Syria’s parliament voted on Wednesday to abolish an Assad-era terrorism court and nullify the legal effects of its rulings, state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV reported, in one of the first significant legislative moves by the country’s new assembly. The Counter-Terrorism Court was establi
CAIRO (AP) — A gold mine collapse in a remote area in Sudan has killed at least 67 people, a medical group and survivors said Wednesday, the latest tragedy in a nation mired in a devastating war. The survivors said the collapse took place at al-Zara gold mine in the town of Nuhud in West Kordofan pr
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Tuesday night announced the removal of the head of the East African country’s electoral body only three months before the country’s first election. Abednego Akok Kacuol was fired from his position as chairperson of the National Elections C
By Samia Nakhoul and Timour Azhari ANKARA, Sept 16 (Reuters) – The Houthi capture of ground overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has dealt Saudi Arabia its gravest setback in Yemen in years, exposing intelligence failures, the collapse of Yemeni allies and the limits of U.S. protection. A Houthi adv
By Michael Georgy, Jana Choukeir and Maha El Dahan DUBAI, Sept 16 – Abdul Malik al-Houthi, an elusive figure who commands a battle-hardened force, scored his biggest military victory in years when his Iran-aligned Houthi militant group swept through Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and tightened their grip
PARIS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – France recorded at least 817 excess deaths between July 27 and August 20, when the country was hit by exceptionally high temperatures, the national health agency said on Wednesday. This would bring the total recorded so far to nearly 8,000 excess deaths since June and the
BEIJING, Sept 16 (Reuters) – China encourages Iran and the U.S. to remain rational, exercise restraint, return to the interim peace deal they signed in June and “engage in substantive consultations,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart in Beijing on Wednesday. “We urge all
By Julia Payne BRUSSELS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday she wanted to open the door for Canada to become the European Union’s first “associate member”. Earlier this week, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney — who was in Strasbourg to listen t
LONDON (AP) — A tiny English village has voted to leave the United Kingdom as a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers on a nearby military base. Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350, voted overwhelmingly for secession in the non-binding
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The U.S. special envoy for Belarus said Wednesday that the country’s authorities have agreed to release 25 prisoners in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions against two Belarusian companies. John Coale, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, made the statem
By Olena Harmash KYIV, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Ukraine is proposing record defence spending for 2027 as the cost of the war with Russia, now in its fifth year, rises and the country needs more financial support from its partners, officials said on Wednesday. Defence spending is expected to hit 4.89 tril
VILNIUS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy to Belarus, John Coale, told Reuters on Wednesday he expects to visit the country again around one month from now, hoping to secure the release of hundreds more prisoners. Belarus on Wednesday agreed to free 25 prisoners in return for
LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – British police said on Wednesday that they had charged a 21-year-old man with racially and religiously aggravated criminal damage against Muslim organisations and venues in London. Illia Bilyk was charged with five offences relating to offensive graffiti being sprayed on
By Charlotte Van Campenhout BRUSSELS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Belgium’s top administrative court ruled that the country’s treasury department lacked the proper legal authority to refuse the release of frozen assets of Russian bank BCS held at Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear. The Council of State
LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – U.S. playwright and author Bonnie Greer has died aged 77, British media reported on Wednesday. The writer, who had lived in Britain since the mid-1980s, was a regular fixture on British television. Her husband David Hutchins said she had “made an enduring contribution to
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a passenger bus in southern Ukraine early Wednesday, killing five people and wounding at least seven. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack, the latest in a series of Russian strikes on civilian transportation, as an “atrocity.” The strike occ
MOSCOW, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Russia believes there is still time to prevent an arms race in space by drawing up a legally-binding international treaty to outlaw the deployment of offensive weapons there and called on the United States and other nations to set aside their scepticism about the idea, De
VATICAN CITY, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Pope Leo said on Wednesday that recent conflicts in the Middle East had tested relations between Jews and Christians, adding that differing views of the ongoing violence had strained dialogue but not broken it. In a new decree to mark the Catholic Church’s last 60 y
By Andrius Sytas VILNIUS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – The drone shot down in Lithuania by an Italian NATO fighter jet on Tuesday was of a type used by Russia and was most likely targeted at Ukraine, Lithuania’s president said on Wednesday. “It was a Gerbera drone,” Gitanas Nauseda told reporters on Wednesda
NEW DELHI, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Nepali authorities said on Wednesday that only about 7% of the bodies recovered after the devastating flood have been identified, underscoring the scale of the work involved in helping thousands of families find out the fate of loved ones. Weeks after the torrent of mu
By Timour Azhari, Alexander Cornwell and Gram Slattery Sept 15 (Reuters) – U.S. officials met representatives of Yemen’s Houthis in Oman over the weekend, five sources familiar with the matter said, days after the Iran-backed militia seized a strategic stretch of the Red Sea coast in a sweeping offe
By Olivia Le Poidevin GENEVA, Sept 16 (Reuters) – A U.N.-mandated probe said on Wednesday that Venezuela’s apparatus of repression remains largely intact despite a reduction in some abuses following President Nicolas Maduro’s removal from power earlier this year. The U.S. has locked Maduro up to fac
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – The World Bank on Wednesday named Nobel laureate and University of Chicago professor Michael Kremer as its next chief economist, succeeding Indermit Gill, who retired last month. Kremer, 61, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019 jointly wit
BERLIN, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Eight state premiers from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats backed the embattled leader in a joint statement on Wednesday. With the letter, the premiers aim to quell speculation about Merz stepping down early after a major defeat in a state election t
BERLIN, Sept 16 (Reuters) – The German government proposed new measures to prevent militant violence, including tougher penalties for knife attacks and propaganda, after a man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State attacked a Pride celebration in Berlin this summer. Here are more details from Wedne
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — A building housing about 100 people gave out in Gaza City early Wednesday morning, killing 19 people as they slept and injuring 25, and leaving rescuers digging through rubble for dozens more who’d been sheltering inside the structure. The sudden collapse of the building
BRUSSELS (AP) — A scorching summer that dried up rivers and killed tens of thousands across the European Union from Portugal to Hungary has shown that the bloc needs to develop new tools to meet a worsening climate, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday. She said that thi
Sept 16 (Reuters) – Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado faces a growing dilemma over when to return home from abroad to rally support amid reticence from the Trump administration about her homecoming, four opposition sources and two political analysts said. Machado left the country lat
By Andrius Sytas and Mark Trevelyan VILNIUS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Belarus has agreed to free 25 prisoners in return for a further easing of U.S. sanctions, an envoy for President Donald Trump said on Wednesday. The deal was part of lengthy negotiations in which Washington is urging Belarusian Preside
