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Hello I'm Neil Nunes with the BBC News.
Polls have closed in Argentina where citizens have been voting in mid-term elections expected to test popular support for President Javier Milei's radical austerity and reform agenda. Half of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of Senate seats are up for grabs. Ione Wells in the capital Buenos Aires has this assessment of Mr. Milei's hopes. Currently he doesn't have a majority in Congress and that's meant that he's come up against some really big obstacles. Just in the last few months, he has tried to veto bills, for example, that would increase spending on public universities, on supporting people with disabilities, on child health care, for example. These were all vetoes of his that were overturned by Congress. So he needs to gain more seats if he is to continue his reforms and cuts. There have been deadly clashes between police and protesters in Cameroon's largest city, Douala. Ahead of expected election results on Monday, at least four people are reported to have died after hundreds of supporters of the presidential opposition candidate, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, defied a ban on protests. The first commercial passenger flight between India and mainland China in over five years has landed in the city of Guangzhou. The resumption of flights is an important step for trade and seen as a symbolic move as India and China cautiously rebuild relations. Flights between them were first suspended during the COVID pandemic but did not resume due to deadly clashes on their disputed Himalayan border a few months later. Here's Anbarasan Ethirajan. India and China have a very strong trade. The bilateral trade stands at about $130 billion, the second biggest trading partner after the U.S. So that means you have thousands of people, businessmen and traders going to China, especially mainland China. And India depends heavily on China for pharmaceuticals, cars, spare parts, you name anything, it comes from China. And the trade deficit is like about $100 billion. So it is good news for business travelers because they were taking detour, taking like a transit route via Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and other places. The Indian Election Commission is expected to announce on Monday the first phase of a nationwide revision of its electoral roll. Around 10 states are likely to be affected. But critics say the exercise could lead to large-scale disenfranchisement of millions of voters. India's top polling body argues the special revision will avoid duplication. The United Nations has called for safe passage for trapped civilians out of el-Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claimed they had seized full control of the city. The U.N. humanitarian aid chief said hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped and terrified. Sudan's two-year war has killed tens of thousands of people. BBC World News. The attorney general of Venezuela has said that the U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to overthrow the government in Caracas and to colonize Venezuela. In a BBC interview, Tarek William Saab dismissed the Trump administration's claims that Venezuela was trafficking drugs to the U.S. He added that Washington would not succeed in bringing down the government. "There's no doubt about it because the CIA already tried to do something similar before. I can name you a few times this has happened. On April 2002, when they tried to overthrow the government of Hugo Chávez. Also in 2018, when they attempted the assassination of Nicolás Maduro. All these operations have failed in the past. And this one, that President Trump is carrying out now, is failing as well." Partial results in Ivory Coast's presidential election show the incumbent Alassane Ouattara with a large lead in many areas, paving the way to his fourth term. The incumbent's main rivals were barred from running, stripping the vote of any meaningfulness as a contest. Lithuania has briefly shut the airport in the capital Vilnius after helium balloons entered its airspace, the fifth such incident this month. It's also closed border crossings with neighboring Belarus ahead of a meeting of the National Security Commission on Monday. Lithuania blames the Belarusian leader, a close ally of the Russian president, for failing to stop the flying objects from crossing the border. The authorities in southern India have declared a red alert in parts of Andhra Pradesh state that's bracing for heavy rains ahead of a severe storm. Schools in many coastal districts have been closed on Monday and fishing activities have been suspended. The deep depression is currently hovering in the Bay of Bengal and is gaining strength. That's the latest BBC World News. |