Cuba is famous for its rum cocktails and evening below Havana’s iconic Morro Castle, guarding its bay, 400 people gathered to toast its best-known rum, Havana Club, but not with Cuba libres, mojitos and daiquiris in hand.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said he looked forward to visits by China’s foreign minister and Australia’s prime minister in the coming days.

Dubai, a city in the desert proud of its modern gloss, faced the towering task on Thursday of clearing its waterclogged roads and drying out flooded homes two days after a record storm saw a year’s rain fall in a day.

Indonesia shut a provincial airport and evacuated hundreds of people from the vicinity of the Ruang volcano after it belched explosive plumes of lava, rocks and ash for days, officials said on Thursday, declaring the highest alert on the situation.

Georgia’s parliament approved the first reading of a bill on “foreign agents” that the European Union said risked stifling freedoms and blocking the country’s path to membership.

Israel will make its own decisions about how to defend itself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, as Western countries pleaded for restraint in responding to a volley of attacks from Iran.

As floods engulfed large parts of central Russia, residents of one village defied advice to flee their homes and started building a homemade dam.

Three Russian missiles slammed into the city centre of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, killing at least 17 people, wounding dozens more and damaging civilian buildings, officials said.

Indonesian authorities issued a tsunami alert after eruptions at Ruang Mountain sent ash thousands of feet high. Officials ordered more than 11,000 people to leave the area.

The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to vote Friday on a Palestinian request for full U.N. membership, said diplomats.

Two people have been found dead at a rural property in Waitākere, West Auckland.

Sweden’s parliament on Wednesday passed a law that will make it easier for people to change their legal gender and lower the age at which it is allowed to 16 years from 18 years, despite heavy criticism from within the government coalition.