International news

India said it is testing samples of cough syrups produced by local manufacturer Maiden Pharmaceuticals for export after the World Health Organisation (WHO) said its products were linked to the deaths of dozens of children in Gambia.

US President Joe Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons is the biggest such threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Thai government buildings flew flags at half mast on Friday to mourn the death of more than 30 people, including 23 children, after an ex-policeman burst into a daycare centre in a knife and gun rampage that left the nation shocked and seeking answers.

A man wielding a knife with a long blade stabbed eight people, two of them fatally, in an unprovoked rampage on Thursday along the Las Vegas Strip, and was arrested a short time later, local authorities said.

Six people including police and match organisers are facing criminal charges in Indonesia over a stampede at a football game at the weekend that killed at least 131 people, the country's police chief said on Thursday.

A former policeman killed 34 people, including 22 children, in a gun rampage at a daycare centre in eastern Thailand on Thursday, later shooting dead his wife and child at their home before turning his weapon on himself.

French author Annie Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for "the courage and clinical acuity" in her largely autobiographical books examining personal memory and social inequality.

India is awaiting World Health Organisation (WHO) evidence of a link between an Indian cough syrup and the deaths of dozens of children in Gambia after the UN agency said the medicine may cause kidney damage.

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Thursday in the direction of Japan, after a UN Security Council meeting in response to the North's recent launches.

A SpaceX rocket soared into orbit from Florida on Wednesday carrying the next long-term International Space Station crew, with a Russian cosmonaut, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut flying together in a demonstration of US-Russian teamwork in space despite Ukraine war tensions.

Ukraine said its forces have retaken more settlements in Kherson, one of four partially Russian-occupied regions that President Vladimir Putin formally incorporated into Russia in Europe's biggest annexation since World War II.

At least 15 people died when their vessel sank off the Greek island of Lesbos in the central Aegean Sea early on Thursday, in the second maritime disaster involving migrants since Wednesday, the country's coastguard said.

Protesters from Greenpeace briefly disrupted a speech by British Prime Minister Liz Truss at a conference of the governing Conservative Party on Wednesday, holding up a sign and shouting slogans before they were removed by security.

Scientists Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for discovering reactions that let molecules snap together to create desired compounds and that offer insight into cell biology.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine's military had made major, rapid advances against Russian forces in the past week, taking back dozens of towns in regions in the south and east that Russia has declared annexed.

Police in Stockton, California, on Tuesday released surveillance video footage of a person sought for questioning in connection with a string of six murders and said the crimes could be the work of a serial killer "on a mission."

At least four people have died and several others are still missing in the Indian Himalayas after a group of 41 mountaineers was hit by an avalanche on Tuesday, a statement from a mountaineering institute in northern India said.

Pakistan is out of money to spend on recovery from devastating floods, its climate change minister said on Tuesday, urging prompt international help at the U.N. launch of an aid appeal as funds needed by the country were ramped up five-fold.

Large parts of Bangladesh were left without electricity on Tuesday after a partial grid failure.

Scientists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for their advances in quantum mechanics on the behaviour of subatomic particles, opening the door to work on super-computers and encrypted communication.

Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian defences in the south of the country while expanding their rapid offensive in the east, seizing back more territory in areas annexed by Russia and threatening its troops' supply lines.

A group of 21 trainee mountaineers are missing in the Indian Himalayas after they were hit by an avalanche, an official said on Tuesday, as soldiers and rescuers scoured the area in the northern state of Uttarakhand.

Search-and-rescue teams in Florida doubled back to examine tens of thousands of Gulf Coast homes and businesses on Monday after an initial sweep through areas ravaged by Hurricane Ian, as the death toll from one of America's fiercest storms on record topped 100.

Nuclear-armed North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan for the first time in five years on Tuesday, prompting a warning for residents to take cover and a temporary suspension of train operations in northern Japan.

The number of issued one-way flight tickets from Russia increased 27% the week President Vladimir Putin declared on Sept. 21 the country's first mobilization since World War Two, according to flight ticketing data ForwardKeys.

Former US president Donald Trump sued CNN for defamation on Monday, seeking $475 million in punitive damages and claiming the network had carried out a "campaign of libel and slander" against him.

Dozens of Indonesian police have been placed under investigation over a stampede at a football match on Saturday that killed 125 people.

Iran's supreme leader gave strong backing to security forces confronting nationwide protests, saying on Monday demonstrations ignited by the death of a young woman in police custody were planned and not the actions of "ordinary Iranians".

Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for discoveries that underpin our understanding of how modern day humans evolved from extinct ancestors.

Indonesia has set up an independent team to investigate a crowd crush at a football stadium that killed 125 people authorities said on Monday, as the country's human rights commission questioned the police use of tear gas.

A Pakistani court on Monday accepted an apology tendered by former prime minister Imran Khan and dropped a contempt of court case against him, his defence lawyer said, a ruling that ease the threat of his disqualification from politics.

India's air force (IAF) said on Monday it had scrambled fighter jets after receiving information of a bomb scare on an airline bearing Iranian registration transiting through Indian airspace.

The death toll from Hurricane Ian climbed past 80 on Sunday as embattled residents in Florida and the Carolinas faced a recovery expected to cost tens of billions of dollars, and some officials faced criticism over their response to the storm.

Brazil's presidential election is headed for a run-off vote, electoral authorities said on Sunday, after President Jair Bolsonaro's surprising strength in a first-round vote spoiled rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's hopes of winning outright.

The largely innocuous but soggy remnants of Hurricane Ian drifted through Virginia early on Sunday, leaving in their wake storm-ravaged residents in Florida and the Carolinas facing a disaster recovery expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.

Ukrainian troops said they had retaken the key bastion of Lyman in occupied eastern Ukraine, a stinging defeat that prompted a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin to call for the possible use of low-grade nuclear weapons.

Protesters rallied across Iran and strikes were reported throughout the country's Kurdish region on Saturday as demonstrations ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody entered their third week.

A Russian patrol has detained the director general of Ukraine's Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the state-owned company in charge of the plant said.

Cubans protested in the streets of Havana for a second night late on Friday over continued blackouts across several neighbourhoods.

Ukraine said on Saturday it had encircled thousands of Russian troops around the eastern town of Lyman in a battlefield rebuttal to the Kremlin a day after it proclaimed the region to be part of Russia.

A Tanzanian doctor working in Uganda who contracted Ebola has died, the first health worker killed by the disease in the latest outbreak in the country, Uganda's health minister said on Saturday.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that it rejects Russia's annexation of four regions in Ukraine, adding the decision is a "grave violation" of international law.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed documents to incorporate four Ukrainian territories into Russia in a televised ceremony in the Kremlin.

Missiles slammed into a car market in southern Ukraine on Friday, killing at least 23 people in a convoy of civilian vehicles in an attack local officials blamed on Russia.

Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, will be boarding Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity and blasting off to space on Sunday.

Singapore is reviewing penalties for violent offences following an outcry over a 12-day prison sentence for a student who strangled his girlfriend until she blacked out.