News24 World

The number of forcibly displaced people dropped for the first time in a decade last year, as more opted to return home, despite often unsafe and unstable conditions, the UN said.

President Donald Trump said on ‌Thursday the United States would hit Iran “very hard tonight” and wanted eventually to take ⁠Iran’s oil infrastructure hub Kharg Island, after tit-for-tat strikes in the Gulf that have undermined a shaky ceasefire.

Iran warned on Thursday that the shaky ceasefire in the three-month Middle East war was now “practically meaningless” following fresh strikes by the United States that saw Tehran respond with attacks around the region.

Ukraine’s police chief has accused Russia of ‌recruiting teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian military personnel, following the arrest of a 17-year-old suspected of murdering a serviceman on the instructions of a Russian operative.

Despite the Navy’s severe resource constraints, Operation Copper seems to have been continued for political rather than practical reasons, writes Timothy Walker in ISS Today.

Hundreds of people rallied in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, in support of Iran and its allies in the Middle East war, AFP correspondents said.

Brazil’s Congress on Wednesday moved to cut the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 - a key right-wing push ahead of October elections in which crime is a major voter concern.

The Canadian government introduced a digital safety bill that would ban social media for children under 16, with exemptions for platforms that meet certain safety ⁠standards

A German model missing for almost 11 years is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files, heightening her family’s fears about her fate, German news weekly Der Spiegel reported.

The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed for calm after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles.

The United States launched fresh attacks against Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate, as US leaders accused their counterparts of dragging out negotiations for a deal to end the three-month war.

Staring at the burned-out shell of his Belfast home, Jamie ‌Corry said he would never get over the sight of watching his house ⁠go up in flames, torched by anti-migrant protesters angry at the brutal stabbing of a man in Northern Ireland’s capital.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates denied on Wednesday that he had “victimised anyone” as he began closed-door testimony to US lawmakers over his relationship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

At least 16 pupils have been killed when a fire ripped through a dormitory at a girls’ school in a town in central Kenya, police and a government official say.

President Donald Trump said the United States will renew attacks on Iran on Wednesday, accusing Tehran’s peace negotiators of “playing us for suckers”.

Taiwan’s military fired its new mobile HIMARS rocket system, which is widely used by Ukraine, simulating an attack on an invading Chinese force and demonstrating its ability to “shoot-and-scoot” by avoiding ‌counterstrikes.

The ceasefire between the United States, Israel and Iran that began on 8 April is balanced, by all accounts, on a knife’s edge.

Pakistani strikes killed at least 12 people in Afghanistan near their border, Afghan government officials and local sources said, the deadliest in weeks and following a period of relative calm.

Police in Northern Ireland said they had arrested a Sudanese man on Tuesday over a knife attack that left one person in a serious condition and prompted ‌calls online for a protest after footage circulated on social media.

An Israeli rights group published footage, said to refute claims by the Israeli army regarding an incident in which a soldier allegedly killed a seven-month-old Palestinian infant.