Your second place to come to for international news
Curated by Peter Hulm
Breaking news
Israeli strikes kill six Lebanese medics and 4 others in 24 hours, health ministry says (LINK) — ground.news: 47 media reports (LINK) — 22 May 2026
US green card applicants will now have to return to home countries to apply, DHS says, in a move criticized by aid groups, policy analysts and immigration attorneys (LINK) — 22 May 2026
Judge dismisses charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man the Trump administration deported to El Salvador last year despite a judge's order barring his removal to the country, saying now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spurred a 'tainted investigation' (LINK) — 22 May 2026
WHO: Ebola outbreak now third largest recorded and "spreading rapidly": cases nearing 750, deaths reported at 177 (LINK) — 22 May 2026
France says it has drafted UNSC resolution to open up Hormuz (LINK) — 22 May 2026
— Meanwhile, Washington struggles to bring to a vote a text Russia and China may say is biased against Tehran.
Colombian army deploys hundreds of soldiers in country's southwest after indigenous land dispute leaves 7 dead (LINK) — ground.news: 22 media reports (LINK) — 22 May 2026
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Trump says he's sending 5,000 troops to Poland, deepening confusion over US military deployments to Europe (LINK) — 21 May 2026
Sidelined Tulsi Gabbard resigns as US director of national intelligence from 30 June: husband, Abraham, "has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer". (LINK) — 22 May 2026
Tanzanian top police official Faustine Mafwele sanctioned by US for alleged human rights abuses (LINK) — ground.news: 26 media reports (LINK) — 21 May 2026
Land mine kills 3 children in Syria's Idlib; 4 more wounded (LINK) — ground.news: 14 media reports (LINK) — 20 May 2026
Scientists discover simple way to relieve knee arthritis pain without pills or surgery: turning toes slightly inward or outward when walking (LINK) — 22 May 2026
Scientists may have finally cracked why 90% of humans are right-handed — and the answer has nothing to do with our hands, it has to do with our legs (LINK) — 22 May 2026
— Space Daily: An Oxford team's approach was to test all the major hypotheses simultaneously against data from 41 different species, looking for which combination of factors actually explained the cross-species pattern in which humans are the extreme outlier. No single factor explained the pattern. No other primate species shows population-level handedness anywhere close to this scale. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, show only mild handedness preferences, and the preferences are roughly evenly split between left and right across the population.
— The Oxford team found that two factors together accounted for the human anomaly. The first factor was brain size, specifically the dramatic expansion of brain size that occurred in the human lineage over the last several million years. The second factor was the ratio between arm length and leg length, which is a standard anatomical marker of bipedal locomotion. The 90 percent right-handedness figure was what their model predicted for an animal with our specific combination of brain size and bipedal commitment. The other primates, with smaller brains and more arboreal locomotion, were predicted by the model to have weaker handedness preferences, which is what the data show. The proposal is that bipedalism freed the hands from the task of locomotion. The specialization could include, among other things, the development of strong handedness, in which one hand becomes the dedicated tool-using and fine-manipulation hand while the other becomes the assisting hand.
Meta lays off thousands of employees to offset AI investments: 8,000 staffers reportedly affected, around 10% of the company (LINK) — 21 May 2026
Musk declares himself CEO for life (LINK) — 21 May 2026
Spotify and Universal sign musical licensing deal for AI covers and remixes: the label's roster includes Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Drake and Billie Eilish, though that does not imply any of them have agreed to participate (LINK) — 21 May 2026
Civil engineering professor Moussa Leblouba from the University of Sharjah (UAE)'s invention of a vibration-dissipation device could save a building in the event of an earthquake (LINK) — 21 May 2026
Gonet Geneva Tennis Open 2026: 17-23 May (LINK) — 13 May 2026
— Taylor Fritz, Alexander Bublik, Casper Ruud, Learner Tien, Cameron Norrie and Arthur Rinderknech are all in the Geneva field. Stan Wawrinka will lead the home charge. The prize money for the Gonet Geneva Open is €612,620. Winner: € 93,175, Finalist: €54,360.
Advancing universal health coverage through Traditional Medicine: 79th World Health Assembly, Geneva, Switzerland, 18–23 May 2026 (LINK) — 13 May 2026
The World Health Assembly, the main decision making body of the World Health Organization, is meeting this year in Geneva starting next Monday. "This meeting may represent the last chance for the U.S. to reverse course and remain a member of the WHO" (LINK) — 13 May 2026
25 to 27 October 2026: UNCTAD World Investment Forum 9: in Doha (LINK) — 22 January 2026
Road to the First International Conference of the Global Framework on Chemicals being held in Geneva on 16 to 20 November 2026 (LINK) — 11 February 2026
11 to 15 July 2027: International AIDS Society announces Geneva as host city for IAS 2027:: Around 5,000 people from more than 130 countries are expected to attend. Registration for IAS 2027 will open in November 2026 (LINK) — 22 January 2026