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BBC News with Chris Barrow.
President Trump has said he's pausing an operation to help ships transit the contested Strait of Hormuz. He indicated that this was to see whether a peace agreement with Iran could be reached. Here's our North America correspondent David Willis. President Trump only announced the U.S. military operation to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, christening it "Project Freedom" but in an abrupt change of policy he's now said in a social media post that the project's on hold "for a short period of time" as he put it because the U.S. and Iran had made what he called "great progress" towards a final peace agreement. In a post on social media Mr. Trump said he'd taken the decision at the request of Pakistan which has been mediating negotiations between the United States and Iran. At least 22 people have been killed by the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine. The attacks came hours before a truce declared by Ukraine which has now come into effect. At least 12 people were killed in Zaporizhia and 10 killed in the cities of Kramatorsk and Dnipro. Vitaly Shevchenko from BBC Monitoring has more details. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a statement in which he described the attack on Zaporizhia as a "terrorist strike devoid of military sense" and he also spoke about Russia's proposal to cease fire to mark Victory Day celebrated in Russia on Saturday and the Ukrainian president said well what we need is not a brief halt to the killing and the attacks what we need is lasting peace. Spain has said it will let a cruise ship at the center of a deadly outbreak of hantavirus travel to the Canary Islands. The Ministry of Health in Madrid said it was acting on humanitarian principles and international law following a request from the World Health Organization. The ship is currently anchored off Cape Verde about three or four days journey from the Canaries. The authorities in northeastern Brazil say a teenage boy has opened fire at a school, killing two female members of staff and injuring another employee and a student. They say the suspect has been detained. Youssef Taha reports. The suspect is a 13-year-old student at the school the São José Institute in Rio Branco, the capital of Acre State. The shooting caused panic among the students with some barricading themselves in classrooms and others attempting to escape over six-meter-high wall to an adjacent hotel. A police officer said the weapon used in the attack belonged to the boy's stepfather who is being questioned. The boy's motive for the attack is as yet unknown. The local government has ordered classes suspended for three days at all schools in the state, with specialists offering psychological support to students and teachers. This is the world news from the BBC. The media regulatory body in Burkina Faso has banned the French television channel TV5, accusing it of "disinformation" over its coverage of jihadist violence in the country and in neighboring Mali. It said the channel committed what it described as repeated breaches of media law and ethics in its coverage of security issues. There's been no comment from the channel so far. The German pharmaceutical company BioNTech says it will halt operations at several of its production centers in Germany and Singapore as the COVID-19 vaccine maker moves away from pandemic-era manufacturing. More than 1,800 jobs will be affected. BioNTech's first quarter earnings show that the sales of its COVID vaccines fell by 35 percent. The U.S. tech giant Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of misleading millions of iPhone buyers over artificial intelligence upgrades to its Siri voice assistant. Sanjay Dasgupta reports. A group of shareholders went to court accusing Apple of promoting AI capabilities that as they put it "did not exist at the time and do not exist now" in order to boost iPhone sales. The company had started running advertisements for a number of AI upgrades in 2024, saying they would become available with new iPhones later that year. The iPhones were launched without those features and Apple executives have now confirmed that the new features will be unveiled only next month. In settling the case Apple did not admit to any fault. In men's football, Arsenal have qualified for the final of the UEFA Champions League. In a close match in London, a goal in the first half proved enough to defeat Atletico Madrid 1-0 on the night and 2-1 on aggregate. It will be the club's first appearance in a Champions League final in 20 years. Arsenal have never won the competition. And that's the latest world news from the BBC. |