Reuters World News Summary

Nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September in the custody of morality police, have been at their most intense in the areas where the majority of Iran's 10 million Kurds live. Ukraine says Russians pounding frontline positions with artillery Russian forces are pounding Ukrainian positions with artillery fire and in the eastern region alone launched almost 400 strikes on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Iran intensifies crackdown in Kurdish area; rights group says four killed

Iran's clerical rulers have stepped up suppression of persistent anti-government protests in the country's Kurdish region, deploying troops and killing at least four demonstrators on Sunday, social media posts and rights groups said. Nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September in the custody of morality police, have been at their most intense in the areas where the majority of Iran's 10 million Kurds live.

Ukraine says Russians pounding frontline positions with artillery

Russian forces are pounding Ukrainian positions with artillery fire and in the eastern region alone launched almost 400 strikes on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address. Russia withdrew its forces from the southern city of Kherson this month and moved some of them to reinforce positions in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, an industrial area known as the Donbas.

Hebe de Bonafini, the mother who defied Argentina's dictatorship, dies at 93

Hebe de Bonafini, the iconic co-founder of Argentina's Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and a staunch fighter against the human rights violations committed during the country's military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, died on Sunday at the age of 93. Bonafini became one of Argentina's most famous human rights activists when she and 13 other women began searching for their children who were kidnapped by security forces during the dictatorship. She died on Sunday morning, her daughter said in a statement.

U.S. Vice President Harris to affirm defense commitment to Philippines

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will reaffirm American commitments to the defence of the Philippines when she meets with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Manila on Monday, a senior U.S. administration official said. Harris, whose three-day trip to the Philippines includes a stop on the islands of Palawan on the edge of the South China Sea, will also reaffirm Washington's support for a 2016 international tribunal ruling that invalidated China's expansive claim in the disputed waterway.

G7 calls for 'significant' U.N. response to North Korea missile launches

The United Nations' Security Council needs to take "significant measures" in response to the latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch by North Korea, foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialised nations said on Sunday. The Security Council is set to discuss North Korea in a meeting on Monday at the request of the United States, following the latest in a series of missile test launches this year.

Malaysia's Muhyiddin gains backing for PM bid after indecisive election

Malaysia's former premier Muhyiddin Yassin secured backing from two political blocs on Sunday as he sought to form a new government after a general election produced a hung parliament, but he had yet to win the required majority. Muhyiddin, of the Perikatan Nasional coalition, said he had won support from two regional blocs based in the island of Borneo. That would boost his alliance's seat tally from 73 to 101 - still short of the required 112 majority.

Ukraine nuclear plant shelled, U.N. warns: 'You're playing with fire!'

Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, was rocked by shelling on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the U.N. nuclear watchdog which said such attacks risked a major disaster. More than a dozen blasts shook Europe's biggest nuclear power plant on Saturday evening and Sunday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.

World's longest-ruling leader holds vote to extend rule of tiny African state

The world's longest-ruling leader, President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, staged a vote on Sunday to extend his 43-year-rule of a tiny, authoritarian African state where once plentiful oil wealth has been in a rapid decline. "What you sow is what you reap," said Obiang, 80, who has regularly won more than 90 percent of the vote in elections conducted over the course of five terms since he seized power from his uncle in a coup in 1979.

Turkish air strikes target Kurdish militants in Syria, Iraq after bomb attack

Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes on Kurdish militant bases in northern Syria and northern Iraq on Sunday, destroying 89 targets, Turkey's defence ministry said, in retaliation for a bomb attack in Istanbul that killed six people one week ago. The strikes targeted bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey says is a wing of the PKK, the ministry added in a statement.

Gunman kills 5 in Colorado LGBTQ nightclub before he is stopped by patrons

A gunman opened fire inside a LGBTQ nightspot in Colorado Springs late on Saturday, killing at least five people and injuring 25 others before being stopped by "heroic" clubgoers, police said. Authorities on Sunday said they were investigating whether the attack was motivated by hate.