A judge has slammed the vicious murder of a “blameless peacemaker” as he threw the man’s killer behind bars for two decades.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu survived two no-confidence votes in parliament, winning a temporary reprieve for his days-old government and the chance to deliver a budget for 2026.

Venezuela has asked the United Nations Security Council to determine that deadly U.S. strikes on vessels off its coast are illegal and issue a statement backing Venezuela’s sovereignty, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, on the eve of talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, that momentum in the Middle East peace process would help end his country’s more than 3-1/2-year-old war with Russia.

France and Britain, in coordination with the United States, are working to finalise a U.N. Security Council resolution in the coming days that would lay the foundation for a future international force in Gaza, France said.

China accused the U.S. of stoking panic over its rare earth controls and said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had made “grossly distorted” remarks about a top Chinese trade negotiator, rejecting a White House call to roll back the curbs.

The leader of the Pakistani Taliban appeared in a video Thursday to prove he was still alive, a week after an apparent attempt to assassinate him with an airstrike in Afghanistan provoked the most serious clash between the neighbours in decades.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Thursday to another summit to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, one day before the U.S. president was due to speak with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The chair of the House Select Committee on China said Thursday that a licensing agreement for use of the TikTok algorithm as part of a deal by Chinese-based ByteDance to sell U.S. assets of the short video app would raise “serious concerns.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to stop buying oil from Russia, and Trump said he would next try to get China to do the same as Washington intensifies efforts to cut off Moscow’s energy revenues.

The weather bureau issued a major flood alert for a rural village at 9.07am, warning of very high river levels in the afternoon.

Top U.S. officials blasted China’s major expansion of rare earth export controls as a threat to global supply chains, but said Beijing could still change course and avoid steps by Washington to decouple from the world’s second-largest economy.