Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading again to the Middle East, making his 11th trip to the region since the Gaza war erupted last year and as Israel steps up attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The State Department said Blinken will depart on Monday for a weeklong trip to Israel and a number of Arab countries, on a visit that also comes as Israel weighs retaliation against Iran for ballistic missile attacks earlier this month.
South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador Monday to criticise Pyongyang's decision to send thousands of soldiers to support Moscow's war in Ukraine, the foreign ministry said, calling for their immediate withdrawal.Seoul's spy agency said that between October 8 and 13, "North Korea transported its special forces to Russia via a Russian Navy transport ship, confirming the start of North Korea's military participation" in Moscow's war in Ukraine.
The seizure "represents the largest amount of drugs seized in a maritime operation, unprecedented in history," the Mexican navy said
The Biden administration is set to propose a new rule Monday that would require private insurance plans to cover over-the-counter contraception without a prescription at no cost.
Death row inmate Robert Roberson is once again the subject of last-minute maneuvering as his scheduled testimony before a bipartisan group of Texas legislators Monday is shrouded in uncertainty just hours before it’s set to begin.
Italy is moving to introduce measures aimed at ensuring that Big Tech firms share the cost of developing telecoms infrastructure in the country, Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said on Monday. Telecoms companies argue that Alphabet's Google, Meta's Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft should bear some of the high-speed network rollout costs because they make up a huge part of internet traffic. Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Telecom Italia call it fair-share funding while Big Tech says it amounts to an internet tax.
Former union leader Dan Osborn's independent run for U.S. Senate in deeply Republican Nebraska has shown unexpected strength and if he pulls off an upset victory could make the Navy veteran a Washington wild card next year. A series of recent polls has shown Osborn within striking distance of incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer, a surprise in a state where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leads Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by 18 percentage points and that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 2006. Democrats stayed out of the race, setting up a one-on-one contest where Osborn has campaigned on a populist message that straddles the major parties' priorities: supporting both abortion rights and gun rights, speaking out against the power of corporate America and describing illegal immigration as a "pool of cheap labor."
Pakistan's government narrowly passed constitutional amendments on Monday giving lawmakers more power to appoint top judges, who have issued a series of recent decisions favouring opposition chief Imran Khan.Under the previous law he would have been automatically replaced by the next most senior judge -- currently Mansoor Ali Shah, who has consistently issued verdicts deemed favourable to Khan and his party.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are hitting the battleground states that could determine the race for the White House.
Tesla's investors and analysts will get a chance to grill CEO Elon Musk on his robotaxi plans on Wednesday when the electric automaker reports its quarterly results, after a much-hyped unveil this month that lacked key details and slammed shares. Musk's roughly 20-minute introduction to the self-driving vehicle, which is expected to underpin Tesla's future, offered no time for questions. Tesla is expected to report that third-quarter profit margin on auto sales fell, squeezed by lucrative incentives to lure electric vehicle buyers.
Election Day is less than a month away. Get to know what states observe it as a holiday.
Vietnam elected Luong Cuong, a military general, as its new president on Monday, the fourth official to fill the role in 18 months. Cuong, 67, was elected by the National Assembly to replace To Lam, who remained president even after he was formally appointed as the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party in August. The role of the general secretary is the most powerful position in Vietnam while the presidency is largely ceremonial.
Pakistan approved changes to the constitution on Monday, which included empowering parliament to pick the Supreme Court's chief justice, drawing criticism from opposition parties who said it was an attempt to subvert the judiciary. Pakistan's top court has become a battleground between the government and jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, ruling on issues ranging from a controversial national election to a potential military court trial for Khan and his supporters. The constitutional changes were approved in an extraordinary session of parliament which was assembled on Sunday, a public holiday, and ran all night, concluding close to dawn on Monday.
Documents obtained by CBS News challenge the claim that a deputy's shooting of Sonya Massey was an isolated incident by one "rogue individual," as the then-sheriff said at the time.
French drugmaker Sanofi's Monday confirmation that it plans to sell a controlling stake in its over-the-counter unit to a US investment fund sparked a new political backlash, stoked by fears the deal marks a loss of sovereignty over key medications.Politicians and unions have for weeks torn into Sanofi's proposed 16-billion-euro ($17.4 billion) deal with US-based investment fund CD&R for a controlling stake in Opella.
At 5:19 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 18 points, or 0.04%, U.S. S&P 500 E-minis were down 4.75 points, or 0.08% and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 46.5 points, or 0.22%. Among S&P 500 companies, 114 are expected to report quarterly earnings during the week, including International Business Machines, Tesla and Coca-Cola.
US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who was accused by Ankara of organising a failed 2016 coup, has died in exile in the United States aged 83, his movement and the Turkish government said Monday.?Gulen, who lived in the United States since 1999, was the bete noire of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who accused him of heading a "terror organisation".?
HANOI (Reuters) -Vietnam's parliament elected on Monday army general Luong Cuong as the new state president in a widely anticipated move that is expected to bring some stability to Vietnamese politics after a turbulent phase of departures and reshuffles. Cuong, 67, takes over the role from To Lam, who was appointed president of the Communist-run, one-party country in May and then also took on the more powerful job of party chief following the death in July of general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. Cuong was elected with the vote of all the 440 deputies who attended the parliament session on Monday.
Lebanese were surveying the damage on Monday after overnight Israeli strikes hit nearly a dozen branches of a Hezbollah-run financial institution that Israel says is used to fund attacks but where many ordinary people keep their savings. The strikes targeted Al-Qard Al-Hassan branches in the southern neighborhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. The Israeli military had issued evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, and there were no reports of casualties.
(Reuters) -Microsoft will allow its customers to build autonomous artificial intelligence agents from next month, in its latest push to tap the booming technology amid growing investor scrutiny of its hefty AI investments. The company is positioning autonomous agents - programs that need little human intervention unlike chatbots - as "apps for an AI-driven world" that can handle client queries, identify sales leads and manage inventory. Other big technology companies such as Salesforce have also touted the potential of such agents, tools that some analysts say could provide companies with an easier path to monetizing the billions of dollars they are pouring into AI.