Torrential rain lashed India’s financial capital Mumbai, triggering floods and killing at least four people as well as paralysing the city and forcing schools to close yesterday before easing slightly in the afternoon.

The pro-Iran Islamic Resistance in Iraq group said it attacked Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat Wednesday as another group urged more attacks amid soaring tensions over Gaza and Lebanon.

Within 30 years, sea levels will rise at least 15 centimetres on several Pacific island nations, regardless of what cuts are made to greenhouse gas emissions, new Nasa analysis shows.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri declined to accept an award from New York City’s Noguchi Museum after it fired three employees for wearing keffiyeh head scarves, an emblem of Palestinian solidarity, following an updated dress code.

At least 46 people, including 37 children, have drowned while celebrating a Hindu festival in eastern India, a local government official said yesterday.

National Conference leader Omar Abdullah yesterday said the low voter turnout in Srinagar district during the second phase of voting for Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls was perhaps a people’s reaction to the Centre trying to project normalcy in the Union Territory.

Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents reviewed by Reuters.

Donald Trump said Wednesday Iran should be blown “to smithereens” if the Islamic Republic is involved in the harming of a US White House candidate or ex-president.

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

Kamala Harris blasted Donald Trump as the “biggest loser” on the economy and a friend of billionaires Wednesday as the election rivals laid out competing plans on the top issue for many US voters.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government faces multinational legal action that could land it in the UN’s top court over its “contempt” for the rights of women and girls, government officials said.

Israeli forces battled Hamas-led fighters in the northern and southern Gaza Strip yesterday, and Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes across the enclave had killed at least 31 Palestinians overnight.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri declined to accept an award from New York City's Noguchi Museum after it fired three employees for wearing keffiyeh head scarves, an emblem of Palestinian solidarity, following an updated dress code

China notified France before test-firing a long-range ballistic missile into the Pacific on Wednesday, authorities in French Polynesia said, adding that the weapon had landed not far from its exclusive economic zone.

A manhunt by air and ground was launched after a command post was attacked, it said, without reporting any casualties among security forces.

At least four federal probes are underway against the Democratic ex-cop, including three led by the US district court in Manhattan, investigating people in the mayor's orbit and high-ranking officials in his administration.

Australia, Canada, Germany and The Netherlands announced in New York they were initiating the proceedings, which could lead to a hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Israel widened its airstrikes in Lebanon on Wednesday and at least 72 people were killed, according to a Reuters compilation of Lebanese health ministry statements. The ministry earlier said at least 223 were wounded.

Japan's top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to comment on the reports at a regular briefing because they concern military operations.

The aim is to prevent the emissions from being released into the atmosphere, and thereby help halt climate change.