WORLD

With existing funding having already dried up, Republicans in the US House of Representatives are blocking authorizing $60 billion in new military aid despite Ukrainian commanders and Western officials have said in recent days that Ukrainian troops are running out of ammunition.

The losses capped a dire week for the UK leader, struggling to revive support for his beleaguered party, as official data showed Britain is in recession after economic contraction for two successive quarters.

Facing a shortage of ammunition and outnumbered on the battlefield, Ukraine may be forced to withdraw from the eastern town, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against the Russian attack.

The new rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), kicked in last year for the world's largest platforms, including Facebook and TikTok, but will now apply to all except the smallest companies.

More than 1,000 people lined up at the Thai embassy in Yangon on Friday as young people sought to leave Myanmar after the junta said it would impose military service.

In public, officials said there was no need for panic -- but refused to give details, only issuing cryptic statements about a serious matter, which is set to be discussed in a closed-doors meeting between congressional leaders and the White House on Thursday.

The twelve complainants, all anonymized in court documents as "Jane Does", claim that the United States' leading national law enforcement agency "failed to adequately investigate the abuse" and ignored Epstein's sexual interest in underage girls.

The group, which delivered 735 aircraft last year despite supply chain problems, said it plans to deliver about 800 in 2024. It reached the mark in 2018 before the pandemic battered the aviation industry.

Belgorod, which lies about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with Ukraine, has been repeatedly targeted by what Moscow says is indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling.

Tensions between the two Caucasus neighbors have remained high since Baku re-captured the Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh last September in a lightning military offensive.

The army said troops were involved in a "precise and limited operation" inside Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis city, after intense fighting between troops and Hamas militants around the facility.

Once forecast to become the world's biggest economy, Japan slipped below Germany last year to fourth place, official data showed Thursday, although India is projected to leapfrog both later this decade.

Intuitive Machines, the Houston company leading mission "IM-1," hopes to become the first non-government entity to achieve a soft touchdown on the Moon, and to land the first US robot on the surface since the Apollo missions more than five decades ago.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven into Gaza's southernmost city, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egyptian border.

Ukrainian commanders and Western officials have said that Kyiv's troops are being outgunned by Russia along the front line and are having to use strained supplies of artillery and air defense munition sparingly.

While the two sides staged new missile attacks on each other, Russian forces have laid siege to Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region since last year and its position has grown increasingly precarious in recent days.

Once a feared general under late dictator Suharto, Indonesia's likely new president Prabowo Subianto now faces the challenge of honouring his campaign pledges to maintain the country's economic growth.

While economists predicted that the recession could be short-lived, the data is a big setback for Sunak, who has placed economic growth as a key priority.

Republicans impeached US President Joe Biden's immigration chief on Tuesday, the culmination of months of attacks on the Democratic administration as they seek to make border security a key issue in November's election.

The Republican White House frontrunner was widely rebuked after saying he would not defend NATO members who had not met their financial obligations, in his most extreme broadside yet against the organization.

So far this year, Kim has declared South Korea his country's "principal enemy", jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and outreach, and threatened war over "even 0.001 mm" of territorial infringement.

CNN and NBC News both called the race in favor of Tom Suozzi, forecasting that he had defeated Republican Mazi Pilip in the election, which was marked by a heavy snowstorm across the district.

The 30-year-old wooden gallery of the Saint Peter the Apostle church had been weakened by termites. It gave way during mass, apparently due to the added weight, plunging churchgoers to the aisle on the ground floor below.

Sarkozy has faced a litany of legal problems since his sole term in office between 2007 and 2012 and has been charged separately with corruption, bribery, influence-peddling and campaign finance infringements.

A Hamas source told AFP that a delegation was headed to the Egyptian capital to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators, after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.

The warning came even as Kyiv said it had destroyed another Russian warship in the Black Sea, the latest in a string of successful attacks on Russia's naval fleet.

Officials on Wednesday also reported the arrest of four people, including the open pit's field manager, in the opening stages of their investigation into the accident.

The United Arab Emirates and Israel established diplomatic ties in 2020 as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords, making it one of the few Arab countries to recognize Israel.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily fire since war broke out on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip.