Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy carries a pistol and would have fought to the death with his inner circle had the Russians stormed his Kyiv headquarters at the start of the war, he said in an interview shown on Saturday.

Montana’s governor on Friday enacted a Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender children, days after a transgender lawmaker protesting the bill was barred from the floor of the state legislature, sparking a national furor.

China expressed “strong dissatisfaction” to South Korea over its joint statement with the United States about the need for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, a foreign ministry statement said on Friday.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned on Thursday a Taliban administration ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations in Afghanistan and called on Taliban leaders to “swiftly reverse” a crackdown on the rights of women and girls.

Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman in international waters, the U.S. Navy said, the latest in a series of seizures or attacks on commercial vessels in sensitive Gulf waters since 2019.

Sudan’s two warring factions said they would prolong a ceasefire agreement by 72 hours, but violence again rocked the capital Khartoum and the western region of Darfur as the U.S. said ceasefire violations were worrying.

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence appeared before a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday fell short of the votes needed to enshrine equal rights for women in the Constitution, a century after a guarantee of gender equality was proposed in Congress.

India’s defence minister told his Chinese counterpart on Thursday that improved relations depend on “peace and tranquillity” returning to their frontier disturbed by military tensions, an Indian government statement said.

The anti-tank ditches near Ukraine’s occupied southeastern town of Polohy stretch for 30 km (19 miles).

Washington has agreed to periodically deploy US nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea and involve Seoul in its nuclear planning operations.

A homicide investigation has been launched into the death of a 60-year-old man in Auckland.