BIG Wrap

(BBC News) Vladimir Putin said he will have to respond to Ukraine's major drone attack on Russian airbases, US President Donald Trump has warned. Speaking after a phone call with the Russian president, Trump said: "President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields." Russian officials declined to confirm this on Wednesday night, but Moscow had earlier said that military options were "on the table"...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Lee Jae-myung, the candidate for the opposition Democratic Party, is poised to become South Korea’s next president after provisional results of a snap election showed him on course for a comfortable win. The election was triggered by former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived imposition of martial law in December. The 61-year-old Lee is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday, becoming the country's 14th president after defeating Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party (PPP). The South...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Officials say multiple military airbases deep inside Russia have come under drone attacks in a major Ukrainian operation ahead of peace talks due to start in Istanbul on Monday. The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday, causing several aircraft to catch fire. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Iran has rejected a report from the United Nations nuclear watchdog that alleges Tehran has increased its stockpile of highly enriched, near weapons-grade uranium by 50 percent in the last three months. Iran said on Saturday that the accusation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was “politically motivated and repeats baseless accusations.” It all comes as nuclear deal negotiations are under way between the United States and Iran, with the Iranian...

(BBC News) US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has warned of China posing an "imminent" threat to Taiwan, while urging Asian countries to boost defence spending and work with the US to deter war. While the US does not "seek to dominate or strangle China", it would not be pushed out of Asia nor allow its allies to be intimidated, Hegseth said while addressing a high-level Asian defence summit. In response, China has accused the US...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) ISIL (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for an attack on the Syrian army, representing the armed group’s first strike at government forces since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, according to analysts. In a statement released late on Thursday, ISIL said its fighters had planted an explosive device that struck a “vehicle of the apostate regime” in southern Syria. The bombing appears to mark an escalation by ISIL, which views the new government in...

(BBC News) President Donald Trump's administration can temporarily revoke the legal status of over 500,000 migrants living in the US, the US Supreme Court ruled on Friday. The ruling put on hold a previous federal judge's order stopping the administration from ending the "parole" immigration program, established by former president Joe Biden. The program protected immigrants fleeing economic and political turmoil in their home countries. The new order puts roughly 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua...

(BBC News) US President Donald Trump can keep collecting import taxes, an appeals court has ruled, a day after a trade ruling found the sweeping global tariffs to be illegal. A federal appeals court granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court's order, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposing the international duties. Wednesday's judgement from the US Court of International Trade drew the ire of Trump officials,...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) United States President Donald Trump has said that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on any strike against Iran to give his administration more time to push for a new nuclear deal with Tehran, as several rounds of talks have been held in Oman and Italy. Trump told reporters on Wednesday at the White House that he relayed to Netanyahu a strike “would be inappropriate to do...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Sudan’s Ministry of Health has reported a spike in cholera cases in the war-torn country, with 2,700 infections and 172 deaths in the past week. In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said 90 percent of cases were reported in Khartoum state, where water and electricity supply have been severely disrupted in recent weeks by drone strikes blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023. Cases...