Russia and Ukraine stepped up their battle over the Black Sea and key trade routes yesterday, with Moscow killing three people in an attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and Kyiv’s drone forces striking Russian shipping.

A record-smashing heat wave was spreading Tuesday from the Mountain West toward the eastern United States and Canada, placing more than 100 million people under heat alerts.

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” sold Tuesday for $50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil bought at auction after a 10-minute battle between seven bidders.

Sudan’s rival factions are profiting from control over the country’s resources and the “war economy” was sustaining the conflict, the United Nations said yesterday.

The US conducted a new wave of strikes against Iran’s coastal defence systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites yesterday after reimposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran threatened to shut off “all other export corridors”.

Global infant vaccination levels improved slightly last year, the UN said yesterday, but warned that drastic funding cuts, conflicts and misinformation were deepening dangerous coverage gaps and allowing outbreaks to surge.

An Israeli airstrike killed a man, his wife and their six-year-old daughter in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian health officials said as talks to advance the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal faltered.

Top management and port CEOs told to report directly to Bin Sulayem

Blaze tore through Rong Beer Na Lad Phrao restaurant and bar on Sunday night

Seven civilians, one paramilitary personnel and one police officer were killed

Kuwait's military said it intercepted attack drones

It added that a number of personnel were also wounded and promised a "decisive response" to the attack.

Albanese says Australia must write its own AI rules to safeguard national interests

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said today it had targeted what it described as command-and-control, logistics, fuel and military equipment facilities belonging to the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

Analysts fear another key global shipping route could come under pressure

Trump warns power plants and bridges will be targeted next week unless Tehran agrees to negotiate, as fighting spreads across the Gulf

An Israeli strike and gunfire killed at least nine Palestinians, including a 10-year-old boy, and a senior Hamas police officer, in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Gazan health and police officials said.

Israel engaged in a multi-year effort to recruit and re-install as leader Iran’s former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The New York Times reported Monday, citing US officials and sources with knowledge of the failed Israeli plot.

Ukraine’s military said yesterday that it struck two Russian oil refineries in the Bashkortostan and Krasnodar regions overnight.

Archaeologists uncovered a 3,000-year-old tomb near the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, authorities said on Sunday, the latest in a series of discoveries that officials hope will boost tourism.