Author: Elizabeth Jenrola Oso

Bondi beach mass shooting

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has released 123 prisoners, including Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava, following the United States’ decision to lift sanctions on Belarusian potash exports. The announcement came after two days of talks in Minsk with Donald Trump’s envoy, John Coale. It marks the largest prisoner release since diplomatic contacts between Washington and Lukashenko began. Belarus, a close ally of Russia, has long been isolated from Europe and the wider West due to its human rights record and violent suppression of protests. US officials described the move as part of an effort to…

Two soldiers and an American civilian interpreter have been killed in an ambush by Islamic State militants in central Syria, the Pentagon confirmed. Several others were wounded in the attack near Palmyra, the first incident to cause US casualties since the fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad a year ago. President Donald Trump described the victims as “three great patriots” and said the wounded were “doing pretty well”. He vowed retaliation, calling the assault “an Isis attack on us and Syria”. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the soldiers had been conducting a “key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations…

Chileans will vote on Sunday in a presidential runoff that pits ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast against former labour minister Jeannette Jara. The contest has been dominated by debate over migration and security, with Kast widely tipped as the favourite. Kast, 59, a former congressman, has pledged to expel tens of thousands of undocumented migrants and build fortified barriers along Chile’s borders. He is the son of a Nazi party member, an admirer of former dictator Augusto Pinochet and a staunch Catholic opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage. Jara, 51, represents a leftwing coalition and served under current president Gabriel Boric.…

The European Union has agreed to indefinitely freeze Russia’s sovereign assets held in the bloc, as Moscow escalates threats to retaliate against Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities depository responsible for safeguarding most of the immobilised funds. The move, which uses emergency powers to immobilise €210bn (£185bn) of Russia’s central bank reserves, marks a significant step towards channelling the money to support Ukraine’s defence. European Council president António Costa confirmed on Friday that EU leaders had fulfilled their October pledge to “keep Russian assets immobilised until Russia ends its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates for the damage caused”. Previously, sanctions…

North Korea has admitted for the first time that its soldiers were sent to Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year to clear mines, a rare acknowledgement of the dangerous tasks assigned to its forces abroad. Leader Kim Jong-un made the disclosure in a speech carried by state media on Saturday, hailing the return of an engineering regiment that had been deployed for 120 days from August. According to South Korean and western intelligence agencies, Pyongyang has dispatched thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine. Analysts say Moscow has provided North Korea with financial aid, military technology,…

Reddit has lodged a challenge in the High Court against Australia’s ban on social media use by under-16s, filing its case two days after introducing age restrictions on its platform. In a statement posted on Friday, the company said it supported efforts to protect young people but argued the legislation imposed “intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences”. Reddit described the law as an “illogical patchwork” of platforms and cited the Australian Human Rights Commission, which has warned that less restrictive alternatives could achieve…

Iranian security forces have arrested 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi at a memorial ceremony for a lawyer and human rights advocate, her supporters said. Mohammadi, who had been granted temporary medical leave from prison in December 2024, was detained alongside several activists at the ceremony for Khosro Alikordi, who was found dead in his office last week, the Narges Foundation said on X. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, who is based in Paris, wrote on X that Mohammadi was arrested in the eastern city of Mashhad together with Sepideh Gholian, another prominent activist. The foundation said Mohammadi’s brother, Mehdi,…

South Korean entrepreneur, Do Kwon, behind the collapse of two cryptocurrencies that wiped out $40bn (£29.8bn) in value, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud. The 34-year-old pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud charges in the United States. He co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna tokens, whose implosion in 2022 triggered a wider crash in the sector. At a hearing in New York, US district judge Paul Engelmayer described Kwon’s crimes as “a fraud of epic generational scale”. He imposed a sentence longer than the 12 years sought by prosecutors,…

Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, creating a federal taskforce with the sole responsibility of challenging state laws. At a ceremony on Thursday, the president said AI companies were eager to invest in the United States but warned that “if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it”. The order, titled Ensuring a national policy framework for artificial intelligence, revives an earlier attempt by Republicans to impose a ten-year moratorium on state regulation of AI. That effort collapsed earlier this year after bipartisan opposition…