Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Exclusive-Alleged Israeli spy company heavily targeted Starlink users, sources say

Experts at a digital defense firm recently found that an Israeli ad tech company was heavily targeting users of Starlink's satellite internet service in a likely effort to spy on them, according to six people familiar with the matter. Researchers at TrendAI, a unit of Tokyo-based cybersecurity company Trend Micro, concluded the Israeli company Discover-Tech was one of the biggest sources of digital ​ads shown to users of SpaceX's Starlink service and that the ads were likely being used to geolocate or otherwise surveil them, according to the six people.

US-brokered truce appears to hold in Ukrainian town close to starvation

A ceasefire appeared to be holding on Tuesday around the Ukrainian town of Oleshky after more than ​four years of Russian occupation that have left trapped residents desperate for food, water and medicine. The local truce, brokered by US first lady Melania Trump with the involvement of Pope Leo, is intended to allow aid ‌into Oleshky and enable those ​who want to leave to do so. Some residents say they have survived on a cup of rice or buckwheat a day, sometimes with a tomato, cucumber or wild plants added.

France temporarily sends maritime patrol plane to Black Sea after cargo ship attacks

France has temporarily relocated a maritime patrol aircraft to Romania to help identify navigation dangers and bolster the protection of critical energy infrastructure in the Black Sea, Romania's defence ministry said on Tuesday. At least eight cargo ships have been hit near the coast of NATO members Romania and Bulgaria in the past three weeks, with some 34 sailors reported dead or missing.

Flavio Bolsonaro and family to receive US visas after leaving Brazil, State Department says

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has left the country for the United States after losing Sunday's presidential election, three sources said on Tuesday afternoon, with the US State Department due to grant him and his family entry visas. Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left Brazil after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court ‌order to surrender his passports.

Pope's cancer is a 'gamechanger' for papacy, Vatican foreign minister says

Pope Leo's lung cancer diagnosis and surgery has affected how Catholics view his health and papacy, the Vatican's foreign minister said on Tuesday, an unusually frank assessment by one of the Church's most senior officials. "It's a bit of a gamechanger," Archbishop Paul Gallagher told journalists at an event in Rome.

Shackled, shaved and in uniform: first inmates arrive at Costa Rica mega-prison

Costa Rica has locked up the first 123 inmates in a new mega-prison, built with the help of the Salvadoran government in the outskirts of capital San José, the country's justice ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry shared images showing rows of inmates dressed in orange, seated with shaved heads bowed and their hands behind their necks, in poses resembling photographs from El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the mega-prison where President Nayib Bukele's government holds tens of thousands of gang members and suspected gang affiliates.

Hegseth likely to face questions on US role in Indo-Pacific at ASEAN summit

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is likely to face questions about Washington’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific region when he meets Southeast Asian counterparts in the Philippines on Wednesday. As the Iran war strains US military readiness and tension rises with China, the Pentagon said Hegseth's attendance at the gathering in the Philippine province of Cebu would reaffirm Washington’s commitment to "peace through strength" in the Pacific.

FBI agent says he feared case against ex-FBI officials tied to Hunter Biden probes would look political

An ‌FBI agent who helped lead the case against two former senior bureau officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden investigations testified on Tuesday that he feared the probe would look "political". The testimony came at a hearing to decide whether the case against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, both former senior counterintelligence officials, can go forward. It adds to defense claims that the Trump Justice Department brought the case for political reasons, which prosecutors deny.

El Salvador deploys hundreds of soldiers to Haiti as four still missing

Around 1,000 soldiers from El Salvador have been sent to Haiti after four Salvadoran members of a UN-backed force went missing during a gang ambush on the outskirts ‌of the capital Port-au-Prince, a security official in Haiti told Reuters on Tuesday. It remains unclear who will command the new Salvadoran contingent, which arrived in a series of flights following the October 18 ambush, how long it will operate in the Caribbean country and how many more soldiers could still be deployed.

US health chief RFK Jr faces widespread rebuke over his anti-Arab remarks

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced widespread rebuke from civil rights groups, healthcare advocates and Democrats on Tuesday over his anti-Arab comments that the Council on American-Islamic Relations cast as "a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry." In his remarks on Monday at a campaign event in Michigan where Republican Mike Rogers is running for the US Senate against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the US health secretary falsely claimed that Arabs had not won major international awards and "don't produce" science and literature.

Netanyahu warns of Arab voter surge in Israel's election; Arab leaders call tactic racist

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners made a last-ditch push on Tuesday to get their supporters to the polls, warning of surging Arab voter turnout, a tactic Arab politicians denounced as racist and inflammatory. Cars flying Netanyahu's Likud party flags drove through Jerusalem blaring the Islamic call to prayer and urging supporters to cast their ballots because "Arabs are voting", witnesses said.

Israel's shekel jumps to 5-week high amid record election turnout

Israel's shekel jumped nearly 2% to a five-week high on Tuesday as high voter turnout lifted traders' bets that the country's first election since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks could end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's tenure. The currency rallied 1.8% to 3.02 per dollar, its strongest level since September 22.

Jordan, Syria to form security committee after deadly strikes on Islamic State sites

Jordan and Syria have agreed to form a joint security committee to ⁠examine the details and repercussions of recent Jordanian ​airstrikes against Islamic State sites in Syria, the two countries' foreign ministries said in a joint statement early on Wednesday. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told his Syrian counterpart Asaad al-Shaibani that Tuesday's strikes ⁠were based on field intelligence and aimed at "neutralising" confirmed threats and imminent attacks targeting Jordan's security, while expressinh "deep regret" over civilian deaths during the operations.

Yemen's Houthis say they hit Saudi Ras Tanura oil refinery with missile

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday they had hit Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura oil refinery, the biggest in the kingdom, with a ballistic missile. Intensifying hostilities between Yemen and Saudi Arabia have further disrupted oil supplies and heightened the risk of a wider regional conflict, eight months since the Iran war began.

Rights monitors raise concerns over senior UAE diplomat bid for next UN boss

Human rights monitors criticized senior UAE diplomat Lana Nusseibeh's candidacy to be the next UN chief on Tuesday, citing her role in championing the country's foreign policy and denying the UAE's role in fuelling the conflict in Sudan. Pushback against the prominent Middle Eastern candidate has gathered steam since her ⁠late entry last week. Her bid upended the gridlocked race to replace UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as he finishes his second five-year term this year.

For Pope Leo, there was little choice but to go to Latin America

Since undergoing surgery on October 13 to treat lung cancer, Pope Leo has weighed a major decision: whether to press ahead with an intense, three-country tour of South America just 24 days after having part of one lung removed. But in the end, according to a biographer and other experts, Leo had little choice but to continue with a visit to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru as the Vatican announced on Monday, to show he remains up to the job of leading the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.

Ukraine's Zelenskiy says territory recaptured, forces on the offensive

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday ​that Ukrainian forces were retaking territory through a series of offensives, including one operation previously unannounced in which Kyiv's troops used gas pipelines to outflank Russian positions. Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Kyiv's battlefield position was the strongest in some time in the 4-1/2-year-long war and could be made stronger with more deliveries of air defence systems from its Western allies.

Critics attack 'anti-democratic' French bill making rioters pay

A proposed French law making rioters liable to pay up to €10,000 ($11,150) for damage they cause faces a backlash from rights groups and some lawyers who say it attacks the basic democratic right to take to the ⁠streets to protest. President Emmanuel Macron's government, under pressure to quell social protests accompanied by some of France's worst unrest in years, says the law is needed to compensate victims of the vandalism that often follows protests, such as the looting and rioting seen across the country on October 17.

Two Nordic leaders urge Putin to end Ukraine war in rare direct contact by Europeans

The leaders of Finland and Norway phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to urge him to end the war in Ukraine, breaking with a longstanding practice among Western European leaders of shunning direct contact with the Kremlin. The call by Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere was an attempt to influence the diplomatic process after US President Donald Trump shifted his position in favour of Russia and US ties with Ukraine hit their lowest point in 18 months.

UK comedian Brand told police he never had non-consensual sex, ⁠court hears

British ​comedian and actor Russell Brand told police that he had never engaged in any non-consensual sexual activity despite encounters in countless locations and scenarios, a London court was told on Tuesday. Brand, once one of Britain's most high-profile broadcasters and the former husband of US singer Katy Perry, is on trial at London's Southwark Crown Court over accusations of sexual offences against six women between 1999 and 2009.

Soccer-From 'Mobut' to Mao, Mbappe dictator meme turns self-mockery into China storm

France and Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe has drawn public lines against extremism and police violence in his home country, but a joke about his own power in football carried him across a different boundary on Tuesday and forced him to apologise to China over an apparent reference to Mao Zedong. The "dictator Mbappe" memes began as caricatures of his influence at Paris St Germain, not statements of political allegiance. By apparently laughing at an image depicting him as Mao, however, the France captain entered territory in which self-mockery could be perceived as an insult to a country's founding leader.

Thousands rally outside Portugal's parliament over housing crisis, police operations

Thousands rallied outside Portugal's parliament in Lisbon on Tuesday to protest against a deepening housing crisis and recent police operations against housing activists, while lawmakers debated the government's draft budget for 2027. Portugal faces one of Europe's most acute home affordability crises, with prices more than doubling since 2017 and new-lease rents nearly doubling, hitting young people hardest, as wages ⁠have not kept up.

Alexander brothers get 30 years each in prison after sex trafficking convictions

Three brothers convicted of exploiting their access to wealth and high society in New York and Miami to drug and rape women were each sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in prison. The twins Alon Alexander and Oren Alexander, 39, and Tal Alexander, 40, were sentenced by US District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan, seven months after being convicted in a six-week trial of multiple sex crimes including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.

Former DOGE staffer Jeremy Lewin departs US State Department policy role

The US State Department's policy chief, Jeremy Lewin, said on Tuesday he was leaving his ⁠role after nearly two years in which he helped lead an overhaul of US foreign assistance and implemented President Donald Trump's policies toward Venezuela and Cuba. Lewin, a top adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ⁠said on social media he was leaving to return to the private sector.

FBI raids home of Eric Swalwell's billionaire donor

The FBI raided the home of Eric Swalwell's billionaire donor on Tuesday as part of the ongoing probe into sexual assault allegations against the former Democratic congressman, a senior law enforcement official told Reuters. The FBI searched the Beverly Hills mansion of Stephen Coobeck looking for electronic devices and records pertaining to prostitution, the official said. The search is connected to the investigation into Swalwell.

Israeli military says it detained Egyptian who crossed into its territory

The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had apprehended an Egyptian civilian overnight after he crossed a border fence from Egyptian territory into Israel near Nitzana. The man was transferred to security forces for further questioning, the military said, without providing additional details.

Mexico's electoral body pledges internal overhaul after corruption crisis

Mexico's National Electoral Institute (INE) promised on Tuesday to carry out an exhaustive, independent and transparent overhaul to guarantee its continuity, after its chief resigned over allegations of irregularities and corruption. The leadership upheaval raises fresh questions over ‌the credibility and stability of the autonomous authority as it prepares to oversee Mexico's 2027 midterm elections.

Protesters enter Serbian pro-Vucic TV ‌station, call for arrest of editor

Protesters entered a Serbian television station supportive of former President Aleksandar Vucic late on Monday, interrupting broadcasting to call for the arrest of its editor, as tens of thousands took to the streets for a second night of post-election celebrations. Serbia's Student List, born out of a student-led anti-corruption protest movement, unseated Vucic in a historic election on ​Sunday, bringing to an end 14 years in power for a man who served as information minister under Slobodan Milosevic and who maintained tight control over the media.