World news

World news

Israel has sealed off large parts of the Tubas governorate after sending heavy reinforcements into the northern Jordan Valley, shutting the region off from the rest of the occupied West Bank and imposing a sweeping siege. Residents told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that military bulldozers piled earth across every approach road before dawn, while Israeli Apache helicopters fired rounds over empty fields around Tubas in a bid to threaten Palestinian residents.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers supported by armoured vehicles have conducted raids in the Palestinian town of Tubas near Nablus in the biggest such military deployment by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza last month. Palestinian media reported that a curfew was imposed on Tuesday night on Tubas and some neighbouring communities, roads were closed by earthen barriers and families forced from their homes to allow Israeli forces to use the buildings.

The Taiwan president, Lai Ching-te, said there was no room for compromise on national security, and he was committed to boosting Taiwan's defences in conjunction with US support. This is not an ideological struggle, nor a unification vs independence' debate, but a struggle to defend democratic Taiwan' and refuse to submit to being China's Taiwan'. Lai and defence minister, Wellington Koo, announced the spending bump an increase of at least $8bn on what had previously been flagged on Wednesday after a briefing from the national security council.

China has warned it will crush any foreign attempts to interfere on behalf of Taiwan, after Japan announced plans to deploy missiles near the democratically-governed island. We have a firm will, strong determination and a strong ability to defend our national sovereignty and territorial integrity, Peng Qingen, a spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Nine of the top 10 mega-cities are in Asia, with Bangladesh's Dhaka projected to be the world's largest city by 2050. A new United Nations report has found that Indonesia's capital Jakarta is the world's largest city with 41.9 million people living there, followed by Dhaka in Bangladesh, which is home to 36.6 million. A low-lying coastal city located in the west of the densely populated island of Java, Jakarta rose from second place to replace Tokyo,

The anomaly is best explained by the politics of his father, Mahmood Mamdani. The apple, it seems, did not roll especially far down the postcolonial hillside. Mahmood, professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University, has long styled himself as the left's answer to VS Naipaul. Where the Nobel-winning curmudgeon surveyed postcolonial Africa with disdain, revelling in the wreckage of independence, Mamdani presents a more forgiving view: pathos instead of pity, paradox instead of despair.

VATICAN CITY Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip, a pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon that would be delicate under any circumstances but is even more fraught given Mideast tensions and the media glare that will document history's first American pope on the road. Leo is fulfilling a trip Pope Francis planned to make, to mark an important anniversary with the Orthodox church in Turkey.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is accelerating efforts to forge a grand national agreement with the business sector to revive an economy showing clear signs of weakness. Despite a cool head approach to the United States and the Mexico Plan, the country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% due to a decline in industrial activity and decreases in consumption, as well as in public and private investment.

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A new feature rolled out on the social media platform X has set off waves of finger-pointing by suggesting that many account holders may not be physically located where users assume they are. Late last week, X, which is owned by Elon Musk, added more information to most accounts, including some that could provide clues on where the account user is located.

I have experience in my field, and was only getting bites here and there from hiring panels who were genuinely more overwhelmed than I was. I found a job in Australia within a week. I dream of scenes from my childhood: beaches, fish and chips, and the bright bloom of pohutukawa trees. But as vivid as those memories are, you can't build a life on scenery alone.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insisted this week that there are no remaining obstacles to signing the EUMercosur trade agreement next month after more than two decades of negotiations. Speaking on the sidelines of the G20 summit in South Africa, Lula said the deal would represent "possibly the largest agreement" in global trade, citing both blocs' nearly 722 million population and $22 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP).

Branson announced her death on Tuesday in a post on social media, saying he was heartbroken to share that Joan, my wife and partner for 50 years, has passed away. She was the most wonderful mum and grandmum our kids and grandkids could have ever wished for. She was my best friend, my rock, my guiding light, my world. Branson is the founder of the Virgin Atlantic airline, space tourism company Virgin Galactic and satellite launcher Virgin Orbit.

Bitter rivals India and Pakistan will face off in Group A at next year's 20-team competition. Archrivals India and Pakistan will clash in a politically-charged Twenty20 World Cup match in Colombo on February 15, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said as it announced the draw on Tuesday. The 20-team tournament will be played across eight venues five in India and three in Sri Lanka between February 7 and March 8, the ICC said in a statement.

The researchers poll 1,000 people per nation. They are asked to rank several issues on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best. The first cut at the data includes GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. The researchers then take more slices of the data. This is broken into eight chapters.

Conflicting claims come before the release of official results by the country's electoral commission. The two leading candidates in Guinea-Bissau's presidential election incumbent Umaro Sissoco Embalo and main challenger Fernando Dias have both declared victory before the release of official results. Both campaigns had claimed on Monday that their contender exceeded the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright, eliminating the need for a run-off.

Following the meetings in Geneva, we see many prospects that can make the path to peace real, Zelensky wrote in an X post on Tuesday. There are solid results, and much work still lies ahead. This morning, I spoke with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom @Keir_Starmer. It was a good and very productive conversation. I thanked the Prime Minister for the condolences he expressed to the Ukrainian people.

A new assessment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has concluded that corruption in Pakistan is behind an economic crisis driven by state capture where public policy is manipulated to benefit a narrow circle of political and business elites. The Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA), finalised in November 2025, presents a grim picture of a system marked by dysfunctional institutions that are unable to enforce the rule of law or safeguard public resources.

At least 127 civilians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since a ceasefire was declared nearly a year ago, the UN has said as it called for an impartial investigation into the strikes. We continue to witness increasing attacks by the Israeli military, resulting in the killing of civilians and destruction of civilian objects in Lebanon, coupled with alarming threats of a wider, intensified offensive, said Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, at a Geneva press briefing.

The economy of the occupied Palestinian territory is facing its most severe collapse on record, driven by the scale of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and continued restrictions on movement and trade, according to a new United Nations report. Published on Monday, the report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said two years of Israeli military operations and longstanding curbs have pushed the occupied territory into an economic downturn now ranked among the 10 worst collapses recorded globally since 1960.

Pakistancarried out airstrikes in easternAfghanistanthat killed at least 10 civilians, including nine children, the Taliban said on Tuesday. What do we know about the Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan? Pakistani intelligence sources told the DPA news agency that the strikes targeted the hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban group in the border province of Khost and other regions. "A good number of militants have been killed and we will continue this," an official told DPA.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the US and Israel to oversee the distribution of aid in Gaza, has announced it is ending its controversial mission and is closing aid distribution sites following a US-brokered ceasefire agreement. Under increasing international pressure to allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip earlier this year, Israel and the US backed the GHF as an independent agency to administer aid.

From the 1940s until the 2000s, 2,000 tons of ammunition fell every year on Vieques, a small island in the Puerto Rican archipelago. The U.S. Navy transformed this Caribbean paradise of crystal-clear waters into the most realistic recreation possible of a war zone: after expelling thousands of residents and taking control of two-thirds of the island and its resources, the navy established there a training base and a firing range to conduct artillery tests and other military exercises