My top recommendation this week is our special report on Iraq's missing Yazidis. A decade after Islamic State rampaged through their Iraqi heartland, hundreds of Yazidi families are still searching for missing loved ones. Iraq Bureau Chief Timour Azhari joins the Reuters World News podcast to speak about the slow, difficult quest that often ends in heartbreak.
Trump at a gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. November 14, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's nominee for defense secretary, was marked by a fellow National Guardsman as "an insider threat" for tattoos he worried might be associated with right-wing extremism. The day after Hegseth was picked, Reuters reported that Trump's team is drawing up a list of Pentagon officers to fire.
Musk's Russia contacts: Reports that Elon Musk, selected to be one of the heads of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, has held multiple calls with Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, should be investigated by the Pentagon and law-enforcement agencies on national-security grounds, two senior Democratic senators said in a letter seen by Reuters.
'No home will go cold': Russian gas producer Gazprom said it would send 42.4 million cubic meters of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, the same volume as on Friday, despite expectations of gas supplies cuts to Austria over a contractual dispute.
The call: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time in nearly two years as Scholz gears up for a snap election and Europe waits to hear Donald Trump's plan for ending the war in Ukraine.
Hopes of a truce: Iran backs any decision taken by Lebanon in talks to secure a ceasefire with Israel, a senior Iranian official said, signaling Tehran wants to see an end to a conflict that has dealt heavy blows to its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Gaza: Aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible, a UN humanitarian official said. The remarks run counter to a US assessment earlier this week that Israel is not currently impeding humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip.
A trillion dollar question? Governments around the globe are ploughing billions of dollars into fossil fuel subsidies to shelter citizens from higher energy costs, but that comes at a fiscal burden and hampers the goal of reducing overall usage. At the UN's COP29 climate summit in Baku, discussions are ongoing over reducing distortions and inefficiencies created by subsidies.
Brain drain is affecting several countries in southern and central Europe, as workers take advantage of freedom of movement rules within the trade bloc. Countries including Italy have tried other schemes to counter the flight, with mixed results.
Since the US and China imposed tit-for-tat tariffs in their trade war during Donald Trump's first presidential term, Beijing has taken steps to reduce its reliance on American farm goods in a wider effort to bolster its food security. That has put China in a better position to withstand tariffs of at least 60% on Chinese imports threatened by Trump.
People fleeing X in the wake of Donald Trump's election have helped social media platform Bluesky add millions of users. Meanwhile, a change in X's terms now requires all legal disputes related to the platform to be brought exclusively in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts in Tarrant County, Texas.
Jake Paul beat Mike Tyson by unanimous decision to win an intergenerational heavyweight battle in Texas that failed to live up to its enormous hype. The bout between the 27-year-old social media influencer-turned-prizefighter Paul and the 58-year-old boxing legend Tyson was streamed live on Netflix.
From Karl the Fog to Mission burritos, our latest City Memo takes us to San Francisco where our Correspondent Jenna Greene shows us how to enjoy the city like a local.
I would walk 28,732 miles: Modern-day adventurer Omar Nok travelled from Cairo to Tokyo without once boarding a plane. His modes of transport included ferry, sandboard and camel.
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