Trump was fiercely opposed to TikTok during his 2017-21 first term, and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.

The Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan this week suffered physical “external interference”, the airline and Azerbaijan’s transport minister said yesterday, citing preliminary results of an investigation, adding to speculation it was hit by a Russian air defence system.

A Nasa spacecraft has made history by surviving the closest-ever approach to the Sun by any human-made object.

Yemeni rebels claimed a strike against the airport in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv yesterday, after Israeli air strikes hit rebel-held Sanaa’s international airport and other targets in Yemen.

The Israeli military reported it conducted air strikes yesterday targeting “infrastructure” on the Syrian-Lebanese border near the village of Janta, which it said was used to smuggle weapons to the armed group Hezbollah.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier yesterday dissolved parliament and confirmed the expected date for the early general election prompted by the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s government last month.

Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of only three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, yesterday, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound, officials said.

Japan’s government yesterday approved a record budget for the next fiscal year, ramping up spending on social welfare, as the population ages, and defence to tackle regional threats.

Nato will bolster its military presence in the Baltic Sea after the suspected sabotage of an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia this week, the Western military alliance’s chief Mark Rutte said yesterday.

China yesterday slapped sanctions on seven US companies after Washington’s approval last week of a $571.3 million military aid package to Taiwan, which Beijing said infringed on its “sovereignty and territory”.

Iraqi authorities are working to exhume the remains of around 100 Kurdish women and children thought to have been killed in the 1980s under former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, three officials said.

Russia’s point man for arms control yesterday cautioned Donald Trump’s incoming administration against resuming nuclear testing, saying Moscow would keep its own options open amid what he said was Washington’s “extremely hostile” stance.

A court in Vietnam yesterday sentenced 27 people to death after finding them guilty of trafficking more than 600 kilos of narcotics including heroin, ketamine and methamphetamine, state media reported.

Manmohan Singh, 92, who passed away on Thursday night, will be accorded state funeral tomorrow at 11:45pm

South Korea's acting president faced an impeachment vote on Friday, as the country struggled to shake off political turmoil sparked by his predecessor's martial law declaration that shocked the world.

Gaza authorities said an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian journalists outside a hospital yesterday, though Israel’s army said it had attacked a vehicle carrying Islamic Jihad fighters.

China has approved the construction of what will be the world’s largest hydropower dam, kicking off an ambitious project on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau that could affect millions downstream in India and Bangladesh.

A Pakistani military court sentenced 60 civilians to 2–10 years in prison for attacks on military facilities after former prime minister Imran Khan’s 2023 arrest, the military’s media wing said yesterday.

South Korea’s opposition said yesterday it filed an impeachment motion against acting president Han Duck-soo, in an escalating row over the composition of the Constitutional Court which would decide whether to remove his predecessor from office.

The United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Lebanon yesterday expressed concern at the “continuing” damage done by Israeli forces in the country’s south despite a ceasefire in the war with Hezbollah.