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BBC News with Roisin Hastie.
Fighting has intensified between the Houthis and Saudi-led forces in Yemen. The coalition says it struck Houthi military sites in Hodeidah and elsewhere along the Red Sea coast. ??? reports. As well as targets around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia says it's launched an offensive on the Houthi-held capital, Sana'a. The Houthis say they've carried out strikes on Saudi Arabia, targeting Riyadh's main airport and oil refinery and a military base. Saudi Arabia has not commented, but reporters in the capital say they've heard explosions. Earlier, Turkey and Pakistan agreed to rapidly deploy forces to Saudi Arabia under a defense alliance agreed in August. The conflict has already displaced tens of thousands of Yemenis. With no signs of negotiations or a ceasefire, the humanitarian situation is expected to worsen. President Trump says threats prompted Washington to remove its bombers from a British air base in southern England. They left suddenly over the weekend, a week after Britain declared a major incident after intercepting vans apparently on their way to RAF Fairford. Mr. Trump made the comments while speaking with reporters outside the White House. "They didn't fly out by accident, no, but there were some threats and rather than tempting the enemy, we'll capture the enemy and beat the enemy, but why should we leave them there? So we moved them around a little bit, not very far." The president's comments appeared to contradict the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called the move "routine." Mr. Trump said his administration knows who made the threats. Iran has denied involvement. New York state has declared an emergency in response to a measles outbreak. More than 100 cases have been reported in New York this year, mainly in rural communities. In the neighboring state of Pennsylvania, nearly 300 people have been hospitalized with the disease. Nada Tawfik reports from New York. It's been three decades since the United States recorded such high cases of measles and since a state faced such a large outbreak. Pennsylvania has so far recorded five measles-associated deaths and more than 1,000 cases. Since last year, outbreaks have been reported in Texas, Utah and South Carolina. With the public health emergency hitting neighboring Pennsylvania hard, Governor Hochul of New York wants to strengthen ongoing efforts to confront the disease by increasing the number of health professionals who can vaccinate and test. The best-selling British author and politician Geoffrey Archer has died. He was 86. He became a Conservative MP before he was 30, but later turned to writing and sold 300 million books in almost 120 countries. In 2001, he was convicted of perjury and went to prison for two years, but he later resumed his writing career. World news from the BBC. Several hundred protesters have clashed with riot police outside Kosovo's parliament in Pristina. The protesters were demanding a law to curb the powers of Kosovo's war crimes court. Last month, the court, which sits in the Netherlands, gave heavy sentences to the former President Hashim Thaçi and other former leaders during the 1990s war for independence from Serbia. Four central Asian countries have stepped up health checks after a suspected death from a pneumonic plague in Russia. Neighboring Kazakhstan is tightening health controls at border checkpoints. So are Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as Pakistan is setting up quarantine centers. There are conflicting accounts of how the woman, a laboratory technician in Siberia, fell ill. Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has declared three days of national mourning after a military aircraft crashed in southern Ondo state, killing 32 people. Authorities say the plane was on a routine mission from Benin City to Lagos when it came down near a naval base. British Members of Parliament are calling for an independent review into the death of a British trader who exposed evidence of links between the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and King Charles' brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The call follows the death by suicide of Simon Andriesz, an ex-employee of Mr. Lutnick's former firm BGC. Andy Verity reports. Simon Andriesz first got in touch with the Financial Conduct Authority in 2018 about Howard Lutnick's former firm BGC Partners and his business links with Jeffrey Epstein and British royals. This year, he discovered emails supporting his concerns in the Epstein files indicating Lutnick and Epstein were co-investors in a firm called Adfin and that Lutnick's firm planned to go into business with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He also said BGC and its lawyers had retaliated against him for his whistle-blowing, an allegation they deny. |