Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Countries prepare to evacuate hantavirus ship passengers

Countries prepared to evacuate their citizens from the luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly strain of hantavirus that is due to ​anchor near Tenerife early on Sunday, as health authorities said the risk of the virus spreading was low. The World Health Organization briefed member ​states with nationals on board on Saturday on how to manage the process, advising active monitoring of ‌passengers for ​a 42-day period from the last point of exposure.

Settlers force re-burial of Palestinian man in West Bank, family says

Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank forced Palestinians to exhume the body of their father from his freshly dug village grave, his family said, near a settlement re-established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Hussein Asasa, 80, died on Friday of natural causes and was buried that evening at the cemetery of Asasa village near Jenin, with all the necessary permits from Israel's military, whose ‌forces were at the site, his son Mohammed said.

Putin says he thinks Russia-Ukraine war is coming to an end

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end, remarks that came just hours after he had vowed victory in Ukraine at Moscow's most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years. "I think that the matter is coming to an end," Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two. He also said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany's former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

UK police charge two men in ‌connection with filming antisemitic TikTok videos

British police have charged two men with religiously aggravated harassment offences after they were alleged to have travelled to a Jewish area of north London to film antisemitic social media videos. The two men, Adam Bedoui, 20, and Abdelkader Amir Bousloub, 21, are due to appear at Thames Magistrates’ ‌Court, a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service said on Saturday.

Qatari LNG tanker sailing towards Hormuz Strait, shipping data shows

Qatari LNG tanker Al Kharaitiyat was sailing towards the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday after departing Qatar's Ras Laffan en route to Port Qasim in Pakistan, according to LSEG shipping data. A successful passage would mark the first transit by a Qatari LNG tanker through the strait since the start of the war on Iran. There was no immediate comment from QatarEnergy.

Analysis-A divided kingdom: pro-independence parties surge across Britain

Three of the United Kingdom's four nations are set for the first time to be governed by pro-independence parties after elections on Friday which nationalists said marked the death knell of the centuries-old union. A breakup of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is by no means imminent, and polling showed voters ⁠were motivated by factors ​other than independence, but the outcome is likely to make Britain harder to govern.

US, Iran ⁠no closer to ending war as Qatari tanker sails toward Strait of Hormuz

A state of relative calm prevailed around the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, after days of sporadic flare-ups, as the United States waited for Iran's response to its latest proposals to end more than two months of fighting and begin peace talks. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Washington expected a ⁠response within hours. But a day later, there was no sign of movement from Tehran on the proposal, which would formally end the war before talks on more contentious issues, including Iran's nuclear program.

Magyar sworn in as Hungary's prime minister on promises of change

Centre-right leader Peter Magyar was sworn in as Hungary's prime minister on Saturday, propelled into office on promises of change ​after years of economic stagnation and strained ties with key allies under his predecessor Viktor Orban. Magyar defeated nationalist Orban after 16 years in power in an April 12 election landslide, handing his Tisza party a constitutional majority that will allow him to roll back reforms critics say have weakened ⁠democracy.

UK nationals on hantavirus-hit cruise ship to isolate in hospital on return

British passengers and staff on the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak will be taken to a hospital in northwest England for an initial isolation period once they are repatriated, UK health authorities said on Saturday. The ship, the MV Hondius, is expected to anchor off the Spanish island of Tenerife early on Sunday, following which the 22 British nationals ⁠on ​board will be flown back to Britain.

Brazil Supreme Court justice suspends bill that ordered early release of ex-president Bolsonaro

Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes prohibited the implementation of a sharp reduction in the 27-year prison sentence of former President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, a court document showed on Saturday. Two Brazilian political parties and the press association ABI this week separately challenged the bill, which would have potentially freed Bolsonaro in 2028.

Russia holds scaled-back WW2 victory parade as worries over war in Ukraine deepen

Russia held its most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years on Saturday due to the threat of attack from ⁠Ukraine, where victory for Moscow's forces has proven elusive more than four years into the deadliest European conflict since World War Two. The May 9 parade on Red Square marks Russia's most revered national holiday - a time to celebrate the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany and to pay homage to the ⁠27 million Soviet citizens, including many from Ukraine, who perished.

Two suspected hantavirus cases found in ⁠Spain, remote Tristan da Cunha

Health experts raced to contain a potential spread of hantavirus as two suspected cases emerged on Friday far from the luxury cruise liner where the outbreak started. The latest reports involved a man who fell ill after leaving the ship and a woman who became sick after sitting near an infected cruise passenger on a plane.

Anger, confusion as Louisiana Republicans move to erase majority-Black US House district

As a child, Leona Tate was one of the "New Orleans Four," the first ‌Black students to desegregate a public school in the deep ‌South, enduring racial slurs and death threats as armed U.S. Marshals escorted them to class. On Friday, more than six decades later, Tate told Republican state lawmakers that their ​proposal to dismantle at least one majority-Black congressional district brought back harrowing memories.