World News Highlights: Tensions, Eruptions, and Historic Elections

This summary covers significant events, including South Korea's response to North Korea's trash balloons, the Philippine volcano eruption, India's record-breaking voter turnout, Imran Khan's court acquittal in Pakistan, South Africa's ANC coalition talks, the UK's Rwanda deportation plans, U.S.-Russia tensions over Ukraine, Georgia's 'foreign agents' bill, and Claudia Sheinbaum's historic win as Mexico's first female president.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

South Korea to suspend military pact with North over trash balloons

South Korea plans to suspend a military agreement signed with North Korea in 2018 aimed at easing tensions, the presidential office said on Monday, after Seoul warned of a strong response to balloons launched by Pyongyang carrying trash to the South. North Korea has launched hundreds balloons carried by wind across the border that dropped trash throughout South Korea, which called it a provocation and rejected Pyongyang's claim it was done to inconvenience its neighbour.

Philippine volcano erupts, authorities raise alert level

The alert level has been raised at a volcano in the central Philippines after it erupted, sending a 5-kilometre (3.1-miles) high ash cloud into the sky, the country's seismology agency said, indicating further eruptions were possible. The alert level was now at 2 on a scale of 5 in Mt. Kanlaon, an active volcano straddling the provinces of Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental, but residents were not advised yet to evacuate, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said in an advisory.

Indian election commission bats away concerns in record-breaking ballot count

India's Election Commission said on Monday a record-breaking 642 million voters cast their ballots in the general election that concluded on June 1 and dismissed opposition concerns over how the votes would be counted. The seven-phase vote - the world's largest - began on April 19 and was held in scorching summer heat in many parts of the country, with temperatures rising to nearly 50 degrees Celsius (122°F) in some north and northwestern regions.

Ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan acquitted in state secrets case, but to stay in jail

A high court in Pakistan acquitted jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday from a conviction on charges of leaking state secrets, his lawyer and his party said, but Khan will remain in prison for now due to a conviction in another case. Khan, 71, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a lower court on charges of making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan's ambassador in Washington in 2022.

All eyes on ANC as it discusses who to enlist to govern South Africa

South Africa was on tenterhooks on Monday for the African National Congress (ANC) to signal whom it will choose as a partner to govern the nation after it lost its majority in last week's election for the first time in 30 years of democracy. The ANC had comfortably won every previous election since the end of apartheid in 1994 but this time voters weary of joblessness, inequality and rolling power blackouts gave it just 40.2% of the vote, down from 57.5% five years ago.

UK gives date for first Rwanda asylum seekers' deportation flights

Britain intends to begin deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda on July 24, a government lawyer said on Monday, although the hotly contested scheme is dependent on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party winning the upcoming election. Sending asylum seekers who have arrived in Britain without permission to Rwanda is one of Sunak's flagship policies, but legal and parliamentary obstacles have meant it has never got off the ground.

Russia warns US against 'fatal' miscalculation in Ukraine

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday the United States could face "fatal consequences" if it ignored Moscow's warnings not to let Ukraine use weapons provided by Washington to strike targets inside Russia. Ryabkov was commenting on President Joe Biden's decision last week to approve the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to hit targets inside Russia that were involved in attacks on Ukraine's Kharkiv region.

Georgian parliamentary speaker signs 'foreign agents' bill into law

Georgia's parliamentary speaker signed into law on Monday a bill on "foreign agents" that has caused a political crisis in the South Caucasus country and drawn sharp criticism from its Western allies. The dispute around the law is a test of whether Georgia, for three decades among the more pro-Western of the Soviet Union's successor states, will maintain its Western orientation or move closer to Russia.

Claudia Sheinbaum claims sweeping mandate to become Mexico's first female president

Claudia Sheinbaum, a Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist, will become Mexico's first female president after winning a landslide election victory and promising to continue the work of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Sheinbaum, 61, secured between 58.3% and 60.7% of votes, according to the INE electoral institute's rapid sample count released late Sunday night, the most support won by a candidate in a Mexican presidential election since the end of one-party rule in 2000.

Mexico's Sheinbaum blazes trail as first woman president, under mentor's watchful eye

Claudia Sheinbaum basked in the glow of a thumping presidential win late Sunday, thanking supporters who gathered at the capital's iconic Zocalo plaza shortly after 1 a.m. to applaud Mexico's first female president. For months, the Nobel prize-winning physicist-turned-Mexico City mayor was the clear frontrunner in the contest to succeed popular outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, her mentor and principle political benefactor over nearly a quarter century.