August 27, 2024

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR | Updates from day 326 of the conflict:

• Reports cite U.N officials as saying that new Israeli evacuation orders affecting the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, where U.N. aid programs are based, will significantly hamper aid efforts across the Palestinian enclave. [more]
• Palestinian health officials say at least 18 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza in the past 24 hours. [more]

UKRAINE | Today is day 915 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia launched drone, cruise missile, and ballistic missile attacks across Ukraine overnight, killing at least four people and injuring 16 others. [more]
• Chinese special envoy for Eurasian affairs Li Hui called yesterday for more countries to support the joint China-Brazil peace plan for Ukraine developed earlier this year that calls for no further expansion of the Ukraine-Russia battlefield and for a peace conference to be held with both Russia and Ukraine participating. [more]

U.S. IMMIGRATION | A federal judge in Texas yesterday temporarily blocked a Biden administration policy that offers spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status, who meet certain criteria, a path to citizenship by applying for a green card and staying in the U.S. while going through the naturalization the process. [more]

FLORIDA | Overturning a lower court ruling, the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a Florida law banning gender-affirming medical treatments for minors can be enforced while court challenges to the law play out. [more]

ALASKA | Authorities say the slope on which a landslide occurred, killing one person and injuring at least three others on Sunday in Ketchikan, Alaska, remained unstable yesterday and that state geologists are on-site to evaluate the potential for further slides. [more]

GEORGIA POLITICS | State and national Democratic parties filed a lawsuit in Georgia yesterday, seeking to block new Georgia State Election Board rules that opponents say could be used by county officials to refuse to certify election results. [more]

U.S. MILITARY | Attorneys for U.S. Army Private Travis King, who fled into North Korea last July and was returned to U.S. custody months later, will plead guilty to desertion and other charges at a September hearing at Fort Bliss, Texas. [more]

PHILIPPINES AND CHINA | A day after China blocked Philippine vessels from delivering food to a ship at the disputed Sabina Shoal, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. characterized China as the “biggest disruptor” of peace in Southeast Asia today and called for international censure over China’s aggression in the South China Sea. [more]

MPOX | Reuters cites multiple scientists as saying the new mpox strain spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other regions of Africa is mutating faster than expected, causing concern over the ability to track and manage the disease. [more]

AFGHANISTAN | Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, says new vice and virtue laws recently announced by the country’s ruling Taliban provide a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future amidst “already intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls. The new laws, announced by the Taliban last week, include bans on women’s voices and bare faces in public. [more]

SUDAN | U.N. officials say as many as 20 villages were wiped out when eastern Sudan’s Arbaat Dam collapsed Sunday. Reports say at least 30 people died in the resulting flooding and that hundreds of others remain missing. [more]

JAPAN AND CHINA | Calling the incident an unacceptable territorial violation and threat to safety, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said today that a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance plane briefly violated Japan’s southwestern airspace yesterday, prompting a military alert and the scrambling of fighter jets. [more]

CANADA | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday that Canada will impose a 100% tariff on imported Chinese-made electric vehicles, matching U.S. tariffs imposed on the vehicles over what are seen as unfair Chinese government subsidies to the industry. [more]

PAKISTAN | The Baluchistan Liberation Army separatist group claimed responsibility today for multiple attacks Sunday and Monday in southwestern Pakistan in which more than 40 people were killed. [more]

MALAYSIA | Former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was charged with sedition in Malaysia today over remarks he made in a speech last month that are alleged to have questioned the integrity of the country’s former monarch, King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah. Yassin, who faces a prison sentence, a fine, or both, if convicted, has denied the charges against him. [more]

JAPAN | Reports cite Japanese authorities as saying train services and other transportation could be disrupted on the southern islands of Kyushu and Honshu later this week due to the approach of Typhoon Shanshan, which is expected to bring heavy rains and high winds to the region between Wednesday and Sunday. [more]

BRAZIL | Brazilian environmental officials issued an air quality index and smog alert for the capital Brasilia late Sunday night due to high levels of smoke in the air from fires in the Amazon rainforest, Cerrado savannah, the Pantanal wetland, and areas of the state of Sao Paulo. [more]

VENEZUELA | Juan Carlos Delpino, a member of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, published a letter on social media yesterday denouncing what he called a “grave lack of transparency and veracity” in last month’s presidential election and rebuking officials who declared incumbent President Nicolás Maduro the winner. [more]

BASEBALL | Former Blue Jays and current Red Sox catcher Danny Jansen became the first-ever player to appear on both sides of a professional baseball box score last night when he took the field for Boston in the resumption of a rain-delayed game he started for Toronto in June before being traded to the Red Sox. [more]

TENNIS | Defending champions Novak Djokovic and Coco Gauff both won their matches in yesterday’s opening round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 1883, the ongoing eruption of Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano peaked, destroying some 70% of the island of Krakatoa and its surrounding archipelago and resulting in more than 36,000 deaths from the explosion and resulting tsunamis. [more history]