World News

Spanish authorities have declared a drought emergency in and around Barcelona, Spain’s second-largest city and the capital of its autonomous northeastern Catalonia region.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have reduced the number of their high-ranking officers stationed in Syria following a series of fatal strikes attributed to Israel according to the Reuters News Agency.

European Union leaders have agreed to create a 50 billion euro ($54 billion) fund for Ukraine after getting on board Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had threatened to veto the deal.

The United States Central Command announced Wednesday it carried out a preemptive strike against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels by destroying a missile the military said posed an “imminent threat” to US aircraft, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

China’s reported practice of forcibly harvesting organs from religious minority prisoners was at the center of an address by US House Speaker Mike Johnson at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington DC on Wednesday, Newsweek reports. Johnson referenced the practice by the Chinese Communist Party amid a warning that world governments become “tyrannical” when they suppress religious freedom.

The United States says the drone attack that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan was carried out by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes the militant group Kataib Hezbollah.

The NATO military alliance has begun its largest exercise since the Cold War, involving 90,000 troops as several European nations prepare for a possible war with Russia.

The Israeli ambassador to Sweden said Wednesday that the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, the capital, was the target of an “attempted attack.”

Antisemitic acts in France nearly quadrupled in 2023, compared to the previous year, according to a warning from the country’s leading Jewish interest group. The Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) attributed this sharp increase in incidents to the aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

Hungary has condemned a leaked secret European Union plan to cripple Hungary’s economy if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decides this week again to block a 50 billion euro ($54.2 billion) EU aid package for wartorn Ukraine.

French president Emmanuel Macron held crisis talks late Monday with crucial cabinet ministers to discuss the “Operation Paris Siege” by hundreds of thousands of French farmers to protest the European Union-driven “excessive” environmental regulations, taxes, and low pay.

Billionaire Elon Musk says his brain chip firm Neuralink has implanted its device in a human for the first time, despite warnings from health professionals and an ongoing U.S. investigation into its practices.

The world is awaiting President Joe Biden’s response to a drone attack in Jordan over the weekend that left three U.S. service members dead and more than 30 injured.

A new survey shows that nearly half of Britain’s Jews are thinking of leaving the UK because of the massive rise in antisemitism that followed the genocidal Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian jihadist group Hamas, the Jerusalem Post reports.

A fire raging at a British-managed oil tanker in the Red Sea that was hit in a missile strike launched by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen has been put out, officials say.

Pope Francis on Sunday condemned an attack by masked assailants who opened fire during Sunday Mass at an Italian church in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, killing one person.

U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed Sunday that three American service members were killed and “many wounded” in an unmanned aerial drone attack by Iran-backed groups on U.S. forces stationed in north-eastern Jordan.

Germany’s defense minister has urged a “serious national debate” about the future of the German military after warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin could attack the country and much of Europe within eight years.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson says he wants to meet his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán in Brussels next week to clear the remaining obstacle to Stockholm’s delayed bid to join the NATO military alliance.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has accused Israel of genocide, and his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi, who seeks the Jewish nation’s destruction, have agreed to tighten security cooperation.