Israelis were voting yesterday in their fifth election in less than four years, with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu campaigning for a comeback with help from the rising extreme-right.

At least 14 people, including two children and a teenager, were shot in a drive-by shooting in western Chicago on Halloween night on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of fatalities, police said.

Iran's hardline judiciary will hold public trials of about 1,000 people indicted over unrest in Tehran, a semi-official news agency said on Monday, intensifying efforts to crush weeks of protests ignited by Mahsa Amini's death in police custody.

Ships brought grain from Ukrainian ports yesterday, suggesting Moscow had stopped short of reimposing a blockade that might have caused world hunger, despite suspending its participation in a UN programme to safely export grain from the war zone.

The war raging in Ukraine and other overlapping crises are taking a toll on labour markets worldwide, the UN said yesterday, suggesting a “sharp” slowdown was already underway.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi discussed rivalry between two superpowers and Russia’s war in Ukraine in a call Sunday, State Department and Beijing’s foreign ministry said.

A tense Brazil awaited Jair Bolsonaro’s next move yesterday, as the far-right incumbent remained silent after losing a razor-thin runoff presidential election to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -- who now faces a tough to-do list.

The cameras and equipment of a famed US explorer, Bradford Washburn, have been found after being abandoned in the ice of a Yukon glacier in 1937, Canadian officials said.

Four years ago, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reputation and political future were in tatters. After an unlikely rise from poverty to union leader to Brazil’s presidency, the man universally known as Lula had landed in prison.

Brazilian leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva narrowly defeated President Jair Bolsonaro in a runoff election, but the far right incumbent did not concede defeat on Sunday night, raising concerns that he might contest the result.

Leftist Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday defeated President Jair Bolsonaro in an election runoff that marked a stunning comeback for him for a third time and the end of Brazil's most right-wing government in decades.

Ukraine’s maritime grain exports were halted yesterday after Russia suspended its participation in a landmark agreement that allowed the vital shipments, blaming drone attacks on its ships in Crimea.

The world’s longest passenger train -- an assembly of 100 connected coaches measuring nearly two kilometres -- wound through breath-taking scenery in the Swiss Alps Saturday.

A Palestinian gunman killed one person and wounded at least three others in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank before being shot dead by a guard, the Israeli military, medics and a settlement spokesperson said.

A painting by Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian has been hanging upside down for 77 years, says a curator at the German museum.

President Joe Biden cast his ballot in the US midterms Saturday, participating in early voting ahead of elections that could cost his Democrats their Congressional majority.

A stampede left nine spectators and two police officers dead during a packed concert by African music star Fally Ipupa at the biggest stadium in DR Congo’s capital, the interior minister said yesterday, blaming the organisers.

Brazilians yesterday voted in a white-knuckle presidential runoff election, choosing between wildly different visions of their future offered by far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and his leftist arch-rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The number of people killed in twin car bombings in the Somali capital Mogadishu, claimed by Al-Shabaab Islamists, has risen to 100, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said yesterday.

More than 150 people were killed in a stampede at a Halloween event in central Seoul, officials said yesterday, with South Korea’s president vowing a full investigation into one of the country’s worst-ever disasters.