BIG Wrap

(BBC News) One of the four sons of notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in a US court. Joaquín Guzmán López's guilty plea on Monday comes after US prosecutors pledged last May to not pursue the death penalty against him. Lopez, 39, is a member of Los Chapitos, a cell made up of El Chapo's children, including his brother Ovidio, who pleaded guilty in July to drug...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Flooding and landslides have killed more than 1,140 people across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia following tropical storms in recent days, with efforts under way to help thousands affected by the extreme weather. Arriving in North Sumatra on Monday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said the government’s priority was “how to immediately send the necessary aid.” “There are several isolated villages that, God willing, we can reach,” Prabowo said, adding that the...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) United States President Donald Trump has said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela is to be closed “in its entirety”, as tensions between the countries escalate. There was no immediate response by Venezuela to Trump’s social media post on Saturday. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump’s post comes amid...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem says the group has the right to respond to Israel’s assassination of its top military chief in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week. In a televised speech on Friday, Qassem called the killing of Haytham Ali Tabtabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime”, adding that the Lebanese armed group has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that.” “Do you expect a war...

Andriy Yermak, right, has for years been Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky's closest aide and has played a key role in peace talks. (BBC News) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has resigned following an anti-corruption raid on his home. Yermak, a towering figure with enormous political influence, has been Zelensky's closest adviser throughout Russia's full-scale war, but has come under increasing pressure over an escalating scandal – even though he...

(BBC News) President Vladimir Putin has doubled down on his core demands for ending the war in Ukraine, saying Russia will lay down arms only if Kyiv's troops withdraw from territory claimed by Moscow. Putin has long pushed for legal recognition of the Ukrainian territories Russia has seized by force. They include the southern Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014, and the eastern Donbas region, which Moscow now occupies for the most part. For Kyiv, which has...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Firefighters in Hong Kong are working for a second day to put out a large blaze at a residential complex that has killed at least 75 people in the Chinese territory’s deadliest and most destructive fire in 60 years. Officials said on Thursday that flames in four buildings in the Wang Fuk Court housing complex, located in the Tai Po neighbourhood, had been extinguished and fires in the rest of the site were...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) A group of military officers in Guinea-Bissau has claimed “total control” of the country, a day after two leading candidates in a tightly contested presidential election each declared victory. Calling themselves the “High Military Command for the Restoration of Order”, the officers read out a statement on television on Wednesday, declaring that they had ordered the immediate suspension of the electoral process “until further notice”. They also ordered the closure of all land,...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) The United States envoy has called for the warring parties in Sudan to accept his truce proposal without seeking preconditions. Massad Boulos, adviser to President Donald Trump on African and Arab affairs, told a news conference in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday that he had presented the warring generals in Sudan with a “comprehensive” ceasefire plan, but it was accepted by neither side. “We would like them to accept the specific text that...

(BBC News) The brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points at ages nine, 32, 66 and 83, scientists have revealed. Around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 had scans to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that the brain stays in the adolescent phase until our early thirties when we "peak". They say the results could help us understand why the risk...