September 20, 2022

UKRAINE | Today is day 209 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• Luhansk provincial Governor Serhiy Gaidai says Ukrainian forces have regained control of the region's Bilohorivka village and are making other advances in their attempt to retake all of the Luhansk province from Russian occupation. [more]
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to call for accelerated delivery of international military aid to his country when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly in a video address tomorrow. [more]
• In a coordinated move, the Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania closed their borders to most Russian citizens traveling for tourism, business, sports, or cultural reasons yesterday. A similar measure is expected to take effect in Poland on September 26. [more]

UNITED NATIONS | U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will deliver his "State of the World" speech today at the opening of the U.N.'s 77th General Assembly in New York. The meeting is the first time the General Assembly will gather in-person in three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [more]

HURRICANE FIONA | Much of Puerto Rico remains without power today in the wake of Hurricane Fiona, which has strengthened into a Category 3 storm and is headed toward the Turks and Caicos Islands this morning. [more]

2ND AMENDMENT | A federal judge in Texas ruled yesterday that the U.S. law barring people under felony indictment from purchasing firearms is unconstitutional. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Counts said the law does not align with the "historical tradition" of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. [more]

U.S. BORDERS | The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency says it has documented more than 2.15 million individual encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border so far this fiscal year, up from 1.73 million documented for all of last year. CPB officials say a large part of the increase has been due to people fleeing authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. [CPB data report] [more]

MYANMAR | Reports from Myanmar today say at least 13 people, including seven children, were killed on Friday when government helicopters fired on a school in Tabayin Township in the country's Shwebo District. The state-run Myanma Alinn newspaper reports that government security forces believed pro-democracy insurgents were hiding in and around the school. [more]

JAPAN | Japanese authorities say at least two people were killed, and more than 100 injured, in flooding and landslides caused by Typhoon Nanmadol, which has now moved into the Pacific Ocean. Reports say more than 130,000 homes -- mostly in the southern Kyushu region -- remain without power this morning. [more]

NIGERIA | Officials at Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that more than 300 people have been killed this year in the country's worst floods in a decade, including at least 20 deaths this week. [more]

YEMEN | U.N. officials in Yemen say the international community has pledged $75 million to remove as much as 1 million barrels of oil from a long-stranded oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. The tanker, which has been stranded since the 1980s, contains about four-times the amount of oil released in the Exxon Valdez spill that caused an environmental crisis along the Alaskan coast in 1989. [more]

CHINA | In a move aimed at countering the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns, the Chinese city of Shanghai today announced it will invest about $257 billion in eight major infrastructure projects, including a transport hub, railway and housing improvements, offshore wind power projects, and a nature park. [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 1870, Italian troops occupied Rome, leading to the eventual incorporation of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy and the limiting of papal governing authority to the Vatican itself and a small district around it. [more history]