International News Bulletin — August 25, 2026

Politics

• Kurdish-led SDF dissolves after merging into Syria’s army – Commander Mazloum Abdi announced at the presidential palace in Damascus on Tuesday “the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces” and their dissolution as an independent military force, describing a shift “from the battlefields to the fields of construction”. Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa welcomed the merger and, according to Abdi, agreed to recognise Kurdish-language education rights. The SDF was Washington’s main partner against ISIL and ran a de facto autonomous zone in the northeast, most of which it lost during a government offensive in January.
• CIA director reported in Moscow as Kremlin denies talks – CBS News and Axios reported that Director John Ratcliffe travelled to Russia on Tuesday, which would be the highest-level Trump administration visit to Moscow since January 2025; the CIA declined to comment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “there are no such plans” for talks with US envoys this week and that he had no information about a US military aircraft landing in the capital. Al Jazeera cited flight tracking showing a US C-17 leaving Riga at 05:50 GMT and landing in Moscow at 07:04 GMT, while Axios reported that Washington asked Kyiv to suspend strikes until the delegation had left.
• Tanzania’s vice president resigns 295 days into his term – Emmanuel Nchimbi said on Tuesday that he had submitted his resignation to President Samia Suluhu Hassan and would retire from public service and active politics on 4 September. He said the decision honoured a commitment made before he was sworn in on 3 November 2025, when he pledged to step aside if the president wanted a different deputy. Bloomberg reported that the departure followed a rift with Hassan; Tanzanian outlets describe him as the first serving vice president to leave the post voluntarily.
• Spain asks Brussels for emergency funding over Ceuta – The European Commission said it had received Madrid’s formal request, submitted on 24 August, and spokesman Markus Lammert said it was being assessed “as a priority”. The money would fund border infrastructure and reception capacity in the North African enclave, where Al Jazeera reports that between 3,500 and 7,000 people remain of the tens of thousands who crossed from Morocco at the end of July. The Spanish cabinet on Tuesday also approved a single command structure for Ceuta under Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres, who said the priority was the return and repatriation of as many people as possible, adults and minors alike.
• Iran and Oman discuss temporary Hormuz shipping corridor – The two foreign ministers met on Tuesday and said in a joint statement that they had examined a phased framework for a temporary lane through the Strait of Hormuz and for clearing mines from the waterway. Oman’s Badr Albusaidi said he hoped a corridor could be announced soon and that “future management of the strait and a permanent solution will follow in due course”. Traffic through the strait, which normally carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas exports, has been largely paralysed since war broke out on 28 February, and Tehran says it will not fully reopen until Washington lifts its naval blockade and oil sanctions.

Economy

• Canada retaliates with tariffs on more than 700 US products – Ottawa announced counter-tariffs of 15 to 50 percent on over 700 categories of American goods worth 27.6 billion Canadian dollars, about 19.9 billion US dollars, taking effect on 8 September. Steel, aluminium, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp, paper, plastics and electronics are covered, and the package is paired with roughly 5.4 billion US dollars of support for affected businesses. The measure answers the 50 percent US duties that took effect on 22 August and Monday’s announcement of 50 percent tariffs on Canadian vehicles and parts from 1 January 2027.
• Wall Street closes higher before Nvidia’s quarterly results – The S&P 500 ended Tuesday up 0.32 percent at 7,677, the Nasdaq Composite gained about 0.6 percent to 26,151 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.30 percent to 53,577, according to Yahoo Finance’s closing tally. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell about six basis points to 4.63 percent, a second consecutive daily decline. Nvidia rose around 2 percent, ending a seven-session losing run, before results due on Wednesday that investors are treating as the week’s main event alongside the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium.
• Taiwan charges nine over AI server exports to China – Prosecutors in the port city of Keelung said in a statement on Monday that they had indicted nine people, among them one employee of Nvidia’s Taiwan unit and two from Supermicro’s Taiwan unit, over the export to China of 74 servers containing restricted Nvidia B300 chips. Fifty of the servers were transshipped through Indonesia, eight went via Japan and the remainder were sent directly, while a further 56 were seized at the border. Prosecutors are seeking up to five years in prison for seven defendants they said were “driven by the pursuit of exorbitant profits”; Nvidia said its employees have “every incentive to work diligently with customers to ensure compliance”, and Supermicro said it is not a target of the investigation.
• Syria expects investment to follow US terror delisting – The removal of Syria from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism took effect on Monday after a 45-day congressional review, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the step “eliminates the final major barriers for private sector investment in Syria”. Bankers and analysts told Al Jazeera that correspondent banking links should now resume more easily, after the central bank reactivated its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in March, and the World Bank has approved a 100 million dollar grant to modernise the financial sector. Nearly 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line and analysts cautioned that the delisting is not an immediate remedy.
• China warns it will defend interests over Iran sanctions – Foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Tuesday that cooperation between China and Iran “has always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted”, adding that Beijing “will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests”. The comments followed Monday’s US sanctions programme, under which the Treasury designated more than 60 entities, individuals and vessels, several of them in China, and Secretary Scott Bessent said that “no one is above the reach of US sanctions”. China was Iran’s largest oil customer before the war and opposes unilateral sanctions.

World News

• Gang attack on Kenscoff kills dozens near Port-au-Prince – The United Nations said at least 47 people, including five children, were killed when gunmen stormed the farming town in the hills above the Haitian capital late on Sunday, and that more than 50 others were abducted; Al Jazeera had reported a preliminary toll of about 30 while the count was still being established. Survivors said the attackers targeted a church sheltering people already displaced by gang violence, as well as homes and vehicles. Officials attribute the raid to the Viv Ansanm coalition, and a leader calling himself Izo 2 threatened to kill the hostages if any of his fighters were harmed.
• Congo records one of Ebola outbreak’s deadliest weeks – Health authorities counted 5,514 cases and 2,642 deaths as of Saturday, including 317 deaths in the preceding seven days, in what the World Health Organization calls the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. Ituri province is the epicentre, and Congolese experts told the Associated Press that the real totals could be three times higher. More than 16,000 doses of the Ervebo vaccine reached Kinshasa on Friday as part of a 70,000-dose allocation, although it is not established whether the vaccine protects against the Bundibugyo strain driving this outbreak.
• Police use water cannon on job protesters in Patna – Several thousand students and unemployed young people marching on the Bihar chief minister’s residence on Tuesday were pushed back with water cannon and batons after breaking through barriers, and at least 25 were detained and later released. Patna police superintendent Kartikeya K Sharma said officers “will identify those involved in stone pelting at police and will take action against them”. The march followed last month’s Gen Z demonstrations in New Delhi over recruitment exam irregularities; a senior state official said talks with the protesters had been positive and promised a response within days.
• Rohingya mark nine years since flight from Myanmar – Tens of thousands of refugees rallied across the camps at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh on Tuesday to mark what they call the ninth anniversary of the Rohingya genocide and to demand a safe return to Rakhine state. The United Council of Rohingya said it organised the protest to “remember the atrocities committed” and to highlight the continuing humanitarian crisis. About 1.2 million Rohingya live in some 30 camps in the world’s largest refugee settlement, and the UN human rights office recorded more than 6,500 people attempting sea journeys out of Myanmar in 2025, of whom 900 died.
• Hawk Fire near Reno reaches 27 percent containment – Crews had contained just over a quarter of the northern Nevada blaze, which has burned about 60 square kilometres, or 23 square miles, since Saturday, according to updates reported on Tuesday. Roughly 63,000 residents remain under evacuation orders or warnings, down from about 90,000, with at least 32 homes destroyed, six damaged and seven people injured, including three first responders; no deaths have been reported. US Forest Service ranger Matt Zumstein said “we are making progress”, in what officials describe as the third major fire in the Reno area within two weeks.

Bulletin automatically generated on August 25, 2026.