Manal al-Wakeel and her extended family of 30 people thought they were going home.

Displaced from their home in Gaza City months ago, Ms. al-Wakeel and relatives began packing their bags on Monday and preparing to dismantle their tent in Rafah, at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas had announced that it had accepted a cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, leaving many Gazans thinking that a truce was imminent. Their joy was short-lived; it soon became clear that Hamas was not talking about the same proposal endorsed days earlier by Israel, which said the two sides remained far apart.

Eight countries joined the U.S. in opposing the UN’s latest resolution to allow Palestine to qualify to become a full UN member.

The United Nations General Assembly backed the Palestinian bid to be eligible for a full UN membership on Friday, with 143 countries voting in favor, 25 abstaining and nine voting against.

Those nine countries that opposed the Palestinian recognition to join the international body are the U.S., Israel, Argentina, Czech Republic, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Hungary and Papua New Guinea.

AMSTERDAM, May 10 (Reuters) - South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah as part of additional emergency measures over the war in Gaza, the U.N.'s top court said on Friday. In the ongoing case brought by South Africa, which accuses Israel of acts of genocide against Palestinians, the World Court in January ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians.

Last fall, a coalition of rebel groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a rapid-fire offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, quickly overrunning more than 100 military outposts and seizing several key towns along the country’s border with China.

This in itself was not unusual. Myanmar’s military government has faced insurgencies from ethnic and political militias for decades, and there’s been a major uptick in rebel activity since the 2021 coup, which brought the country’s current military junta to power, ending a short period of representative government. Over the past few months, the government has been rapidly losing ground to rebel forces in several regions of the country.

People who are poor, unemployed, homeless, immigrants, or exploited, as well as all those killed by past dictatorships and turned into rubbish by the "throwaway culture" of the present: the level of a society's civilisation is measured by the way they are treated, the Pope said.

Pope Francis reiterated the centrality of the vulnerable as well as the urgency of countering the triple "scourge" of corruption, abuse of power, and lawlessness—both in politics and in society—in his address on Wednesday with representatives of the DIALOP transversal dialogue project.

US climate envoy John Kerry will leave the administration later this winter and plans to help President Joe Biden’s election campaign, Kerry’s office said on Saturday.

Kerry, a US former secretary of state, informed his staff earlier on Saturday after speaking with Biden earlier this week, a spokesman for Kerry said.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has helped in the fight against rebels for more than two decades, will completely withdraw from the country by December.

“After 25 years of presence, MONUSCO will definitively leave the DRC no later than the end of 2024,” Bintou Keita, head of the mission known as MONUSCO said at a media briefing in the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Saturday.

All U.S. and British interests have become legitimate targets, the Houthi's Council declared.

A geopolitical storm is brewing in the Red Sea after U.S.-led strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on Friday sparked a strong reaction from the Iran-backed militia, who immediately condemned the "brutal aggression" and vowed retaliation

The Houthi's Supreme Political Council declared that it would not allow the aggressors to escape punishment and "all U.S. and British interests have become legitimate targets."

Meanwhile, the internationally recognized government of Yemen issued a statement condemning recent military actions by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, blaming the Houthis for "dragging the country into a military confrontation arena for propaganda purposes."

The strikes mainly targeted weapons stores and drone assembly workshops to "intentionally avoid a direct impact on senior Houthi leaders," said Salah Bin Laghbar, an Anden-based political analyst.

"To wake up and find out your country has bombed another country is serious indeed".

As a former minister put it, you are not alone if you heard the headlines on the radio, or a news alert pinged on your phone saying the UK had carried out military strikes on Yemen and wondered, what on earth is going on?

So why did Prime Minister Rishi Sunak get the UK involved in the strikes on the Houthis? As so often in politics, the causes and the consequences are simple but complex too.

China said “reunification” with Taiwan was still “inevitable” after president-elect William Lai Ching-te won Saturday’s pivotal election on the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Lai, from the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won despite warnings from China not to vote for him. He took 40.2 percent of votes cast, according to results from the Central Election Commission.

“I want to thank the Taiwanese people for writing a new chapter in our democracy,” Lai said in his victory speech. “We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy.”

In the run-up to the polls, China denounced Lai as a dangerous separatist, said he would be a threat to peace in the region if he won, and called the elections a choice between “peace and war”.

A landslide in north-west Colombia has killed at least 23 people and injured around 30 more, local authorities say.

The road connecting the cities of Medellín and Quibdo had been closed by several landslides, so many people stopped their cars to take shelter in a house near the community of Carmen de Atrato, a local official said.

Another landslide then struck the road, burying them and some of the vehicles.