1. At least nine people were killed in militant attacks in Pakistan as the country voted in a general election after temporarily cutting mobile phone services and closing some land borders to maintain law and order. We look at how the electoral system works in Pakistan and the challenges the new government faces.

2. In the US, Donald Trump's lawyers bring his fight to stay on the ballot to the Supreme Court. The justices will hear arguments in his appeal of a lower court's decision to disqualify him from Colorado's Republican presidential primary ballot after finding that he participated in an insurrection.

3. Israeli forces bombed areas in the southern border city of Rafah where more than half of Gaza's population is sheltering, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to end the war in the Palestinian enclave. He said the terms proposed by Hamas for a ceasefire were "delusional."

4. Repeated US strikes against Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq are pushing the government to end the mission of the US-led coalition in the country, the prime minister's military spokesman Yahya Rasool said. He added that the coalition "has become a factor for instability."

5. President Vladimir Putin granted an interview to Tucker Carlson, his first to an American TV host since before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On today's Reuters World News podcast, Russia Chief Political Correspondent Andrew Osborn discusses the benefits to Putin of addressing a US audience directly.

6. A volcano in Iceland erupted for the second time this year, pumping lava up to 80 meters (260 feet) into the air in what is the sixth outbreak on the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula since 2021. Live video from the area showed fountains of bright-orange molten rock spewing from fissures in the ground.

7. South Korean prosecutors will appeal a court decision to clear Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee of charges including accounting fraud and stock manipulation in a case related to a 2015 merger of affiliates. The ruling was a surprise to at least some analysts who had expected a suspended sentence.

Source: Reuters
=FRESH NEWS