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Hello, I'm Neil Nunes with the BBC News.
Russia has said its forces have captured the frontline town of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv had sent reinforcements to the key logistics hub last month in a bid to fend off Russia's attack. We get more from Bernadette Kehoe. A Kremlin spokesman said Russian military commanders had informed President Putin about the battlefield gains on Sunday. Pokrovsk, a military logistics hub in the Donetsk region, has been the target of an intense Russian campaign for months. Ukraine has not acknowledged the loss, but the territorial claim steps up pressure on Kyiv as diplomacy to reach a peace deal intensifies. The U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff is to meet President Putin in Moscow on Tuesday. The U.S. wants a deal, but European leaders want stronger security guarantees for Ukraine, with the French president calling Mr. Trump on Monday to press home that message. The electoral authorities in Honduras have appealed for patience and calm after preliminary results from the presidential election showed the two main candidates in what it called a "technical tie." The right-wing candidate Nasry Asfura and his liberal rival Salvador Nasralla are both on around 40 percent. Will Grant has this report from Tegucigalpa. The website of the electoral council has collapsed, apparently from the sheer traffic to the internet site, with the error message only compounding fears among voters of problems with the count. Hondurans recalled a disputed vote in 2017 which ended in street clashes in which more than 20 people were killed. Given this close election, people are keen to avoid an extended period of uncertainty or legal challenges over the result. Nigeria's defense minister Mohammed Badaru Abubakar has stepped down with immediate effect citing health concerns. His resignation comes at a time when the country is dealing with a renewed surge in attacks and mass kidnappings. Chris Ewokor reports. According to a statement by the presidential spokesman, President Bola Tinubu has accepted the resignation of the man he'd appointed two years ago as part of his attempted overhaul of Nigeria's security architecture. But while Mohammed Badaru Abubakar has been in office, he's overseen an escalation in violence as the government struggled to curb the activities of extremist groups in the northeast as well as criminal gangs in northwest and central regions. The twin threats of Islamists and bandits has only gotten worse and Mr. Abubakar's resignation places renewed focus on the government's security agenda. Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has told supporters at a rally in Caracas that his country does not want a "slave's peace" with the United States. He's under mounting pressure from President Trump, who has deployed a fleet to the Caribbean. World news from the BBC. Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated outside the Bulgarian parliament and in cities across the country demanding the resignation of a government they say is corrupt. It's the latest in a string of protests that began last week following the publication of the draft 2026 budget. A U.S. federal appeal court has ruled that President Trump cannot appoint his former personal lawyer as a U.S. state attorney without her going through the customary Senate confirmation process. Alina Habba's been serving as New Jersey's top federal prosecutor without being vetted by senators. This, the judges ruled, raised red flags. The Justice Department could appeal. A son of the jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán has pleaded guilty to charges of drug trafficking and criminal enterprise. Joaquín Guzmán López had originally pleaded not guilty. He was arrested in July last year on his arrival in Texas aboard a small private plane. With him was the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael "Mayo" Zambada, who claimed to have been misled about the plane's destination. Jeffrey Lichtman is Joaquín Guzmán López's defense lawyer. "You know, I don't know, you know, how this ends up. If he gets a 10-year sentence, it's still a lot of time for anybody to spend in prison. So, you know, we'll see where it goes. It's certainly, it's early, is what I would say." Extreme weather conditions and a series of accidents on the Trans-Siberian Highway have caused a traffic jam which reached up to 85 kilometers at its peak on Monday. Motorists and truck drivers were stuck for hours, and some were stranded overnight on the road connecting Siberia and the far east of Russia. Families started to run out of food, water and fuel as the temperatures dropped to minus 30 Celsius. BBC World News. |