Reuters World News Summary

The leaders, meeting in Prague for informal talks, are unlikely to come up with concrete measures on Friday, officials said, but should tell their energy and finance ministers which of the several available solutions to pursue further. Latest four-member SpaceX crew, including cosmonaut, welcomed aboard space station A four-member SpaceX Crew Dragon team, including a Russian cosmonaut and the first Native American woman sent to orbit, safely docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday and moved aboard to begin a five-month science mission.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Analysis-As China party congress looms, signals sought on easing COVID policy

The mounting economic toll of China's zero-COVID policy is raising investor hopes that Beijing may finally begin laying the groundwork for the tricky epidemiological and political task of shifting course following this month's Communist Party congress. It is not clear whether the ruling party congress from Oct. 16 will shed any light on easing strict measures to extinguish all domestic COVID-19 outbreaks, rather than seek to live with the pandemic. Any change, economists and investors predict, would entail gradual steps for a reopening from the first half of 2023 at the earliest.

EU leaders turn to gas price caps to end energy crunch

European Union leaders will lock horns on Friday over whether and how to cap gas prices, as they attempt to curb a surge in energy prices that threatens to push the 27-nation bloc into recession and disrupt the EU's cherished single market. The leaders, meeting in Prague for informal talks, are unlikely to come up with concrete measures on Friday, officials said, but should tell their energy and finance ministers which of the several available solutions to pursue further.

Latest four-member SpaceX crew, including cosmonaut, welcomed aboard space station

A four-member SpaceX Crew Dragon team, including a Russian cosmonaut and the first Native American woman sent to orbit, safely docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday and moved aboard to begin a five-month science mission. Rendezvous of the latest NASA expedition to the orbiting laboratory came just after 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) following a 29-hour flight to the ISS as the two vehicles circled the globe some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth off the west coast of Africa, according to a NASA webcast of the docking.

France's Ernaux, who long scrutinised self, wins Nobel literature prize

French author Annie Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for "the courage and clinical acuity" in her largely autobiographical books examining personal memory and social inequality. In explaining its choice, the Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, "consistently and from different angles examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class".

Bosnian Serb opposition calls election 'rigged', stages protest

Thousands of people on Thursday protested in Banja Luka over what they said was a 'rigged' election in favour of pro-Russian nationalist Milorad Dodik in the vote for president of Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic. The main contenders for the job are Dodik, who is leaving his previous post as Serb member of Bosnia's tri-partite inter-ethnic presidency, and Jelena Trivic, an economics professor from the opposition Party of Democratic Progress (PDP).

'Little kids who were still sleeping' - Thailand mourns victims of mass killing

Pink and white coffins adorned with gold and bearing the bodies of the 22 children killed in a gun and knife rampage in Thailand were loaded onto a truck late on Thursday and driven away in the darkness. Thailand's deputy prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, clasped his hands together and bowed his head as the truck, followed by ambulances carrying the bodies of further victims, pulled away in the small town of Na Klang in northeastern Thailand.

After Syria raid, U.S. kills Islamic State militants in air strike

The U.S. military said it carried out an air strike on Thursday in northern Syria that killed two Islamic State members including a leader it named as Abu-Hashum al-Umawi. The strike came just hours after a rare U.S. helicopter raid on a government-held village in Syria's northeast killed another Islamic State official.

Missile razes Ukraine apartment block, Putin's generals face public backlash

A missile demolished an apartment block on Thursday in a Ukrainian region that Moscow says it has annexed, killing seven people, a Ukrainian official said, as discontent mounted within Russia about the handling of the war by the top brass. The missile attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia in the southern region of the same name left some people buried under rubble, the regional governor said. He added at least five people are missing.

Lesotho votes in election with political crisis still unresolved

Lesotho citizens were due to vote in an election on Friday, after years of political instability that the southern African mountain kingdom's lawmakers have yet to resolve. The election will go ahead despite a deadlock in parliament on a whole gamut of major constitutional reforms that were meant to be enacted ahead of the vote so as to bring order to Lesotho's fractious politics.

COVID wave looms in Europe as booster campaign makes slow start

A new COVID-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of available vaccines will likely limit booster uptake. Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer Omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of Omicron are being tracked by scientists, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said this week.

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