International News Bulletin — August 20, 2026

Politics

• Taiwan approves a record defence budget of NT$1.12 trillion for 2027 – The cabinet in Taipei approved a 2027 defence budget of NT$1.12 trillion, about 35 billion dollars, on Thursday, the first time the island’s military spending has crossed the NT$1 trillion threshold. The South China Morning Post reported the figure is NT$173 billion, or 18.2 percent, above this year’s allocation and equal to 3.01 percent of gross domestic product, meeting the 3 percent target set by President Lai Ching-te; Nikkei Asia and the Japan Times reported the same 18 percent increase. Defence and related security spending would take about 28.6 percent of the government’s proposed NT$3.93 trillion of expenditure, and the package still has to pass a legislature in which the governing party has no majority.
• Bessent says coming sanctions will collapse Iran’s government – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that a new package of measures, combined with the American naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, amounted to “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world” and that “we are going to collapse this regime”. He said he would set out the details at a news conference on Monday, told other governments “you’re either with us or against us”, and declined to say whether China, which he noted draws half of its energy from the Gulf, would face penalties. The Treasury separately designated ten people linked to Hezbollah on Thursday, including a Turkish businessman accused of moving funds to the group, days after President Donald Trump promised the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country” and the United Arab Emirates announced an indefinite trade embargo on Iran.
• Seven governments demand Israel withdraw the E1 settlement tender – France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway and Canada issued a joint statement on Thursday urging Israel “to retract these plans immediately and end its expansion of settlements in the West Bank”, after the housing ministry opened bidding on 18 August for more than 1,200 homes in the E1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim. The Palestinian news agency WAFA put the tender at 1,234 units, roughly a third of the 3,401 approved for the site, with bids due on 19 October, a week before Israel’s 27 October election. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rejected the criticism outright, saying “the Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel”, while Human Rights Watch said the scheme would sever the northern West Bank from the south and displace more than eighteen Bedouin communities.
• Former Zambian minister killed in a raid on an opposition leader’s home – Police said Mutotwe Kafwaya, 49, a former transport minister who became an opposition member of parliament, was fatally shot during a joint security operation at the Lusaka residence of opposition leader Brian Mundubile on 14 August, the day after the presidential election. Officers said they exchanged fire with unidentified people, made eleven arrests and accused Mundubile’s party of militia activity, allegations he called “total fabrications” from hiding. Official results gave President Hakainde Hichilema a second term with about 60 percent against 38 percent for Mundubile, who says he will challenge the count in court, and the European Union observation mission reported that tabulation “deteriorated significantly” after a six-hour pause.
• Liberia charges its former vice president over a record cocaine seizure – Prosecutors charged Jewel Howard-Taylor, vice president from 2018 to 2024, with drug trafficking, money laundering, criminal conspiracy and unlicensed importation of controlled substances, and she was detained on Wednesday at Roberts International Airport before boarding a flight. The case follows the seizure on 21 July of nearly four tonnes of cocaine at Duazon, east of Monrovia, which the government valued at 317 million dollars. Two Croatian nationals and one Ukrainian were charged in absentia, and officials said no office was too high to escape the investigation.

Economy

• Wall Street falls as bond yields rebound and oil climbs – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Thursday’s session down 703.84 points, or 1.32 percent, at 52,759.21, the S&P 500 lost 0.87 percent to 7,641.16 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.00 percent to 26,067.17, according to Yahoo Finance data. The relief that followed the Treasury’s expanded debt buybacks proved short-lived, with the ten-year yield back up about four basis points to 4.69 percent and the thirty-year at 5.24 percent. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 2.62 percent to 86.60 dollars a barrel and Brent traded near 93 dollars, up more than 4 percent on the week, as traders priced in Trump’s threat to penalise buyers of Iranian oil.
• Walmart posts its slowest United States sales growth in six years – Comparable sales at established American stores rose 2.6 percent in the quarter, against analyst estimates of 3.7 to 3.8 percent, the weakest rate in more than six years, and average spending per transaction grew 1.1 percent after a 3.1 percent rise a year earlier. The retailer nevertheless raised its full-year targets for the first time this year, lifting expected net sales growth to 4 to 5 percent and adjusted earnings per share to 2.80 to 2.87 dollars, with advertising revenue up 43 percent and e-commerce up 24 percent. The shares fell about 9 percent, their worst single session since May 2022, as the company pointed to shoppers making trade-offs against higher fuel prices and to pharmacy pricing rules.
• Japan reports record exports and record imports for July – Finance ministry data published on Thursday showed exports up 23.2 percent from a year earlier to 11.5 trillion yen, about 72.6 billion dollars, an eleventh consecutive monthly increase in value terms driven by cars and semiconductors. Imports rose 27.8 percent to 12.1 trillion yen, a record for a second straight month, lifted by crude oil costs during the war in Iran. The trade deficit came to 634.5 billion yen, a third consecutive monthly shortfall but smaller than the market forecast of about 680 billion yen, and both flows were the largest since comparable records began in January 1979.
• China holds its benchmark lending rates for a fifteenth month – The People’s Bank of China left the one-year loan prime rate at 3.00 percent and the rate for tenors of five years and above at 3.50 percent in Thursday’s fixing. The pair have been unchanged since June 2025, a run of fifteen consecutive months. The decision keeps policy steady while Beijing leans on fiscal and targeted measures to support demand.

World News

• Russian missile barrage kills at least 16 in the Kyiv region – Ukrainian officials said ballistic and cruise missiles struck the Sviatoshynskyi, Solomianskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts overnight into Thursday, collapsing part of a nine-storey residential block and damaging a children’s hospital, a school and warehouses near Boryspil. Tolls rose through the day and differed by source, from twelve dead and thirty-three wounded reported by Meduza and Euronews to sixteen reported by Al Jazeera and France 24 and seventeen by CNN, and the air force said thirty-nine of forty-four missiles were intercepted. Poland scrambled aircraft and Romania tracked a drone that crossed near Galati and came down in Tulcea county, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “as long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistic defence, Russia will not consider peace seriously”.
• Dozens of children die as an overloaded boat capsizes in Nigeria – The boat went down near Gorau in the Goronyo area of Sokoto state on Thursday, and residents said at least 46 bodies had been recovered and buried while a Reuters witness counted about 50 laid out at a mosque. Abdulkadir Yusuf of the National Inland Waterways Authority said roughly 40 of the dead were children, and the state lawmaker Nasiru Adamu said most of those aboard were aged between ten and fifteen and that sixteen people were rescued. The toll is preliminary and no official figure has been issued; the authorities attribute frequent river accidents in Nigeria to overloading, poor maintenance and weak enforcement of safety rules.
• Israel opens its first criminal inquiries into troop conduct in Gaza – The military said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents and would open criminal investigations into five cases, among them the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab together with her aunt, uncle and four cousins, and the deaths of fifteen Red Crescent and Civil Defence responders in Rafah. It acknowledged firing at the car carrying the child as the family fled an offensive in Gaza City, and at ambulances sent to recover casualties, while declining to investigate strikes that killed staff of World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders. The Palestinian Red Crescent said “Israeli measures are not enough” and repeated its demand for an international investigation, and the Rajab family said it would pursue the case through international courts.
• Colombia’s earthquake toll rises to 314 with 262 still missing – The national disaster agency UNGRD put the confirmed toll from the magnitude 7.4 quake that struck near San Jose del Palmar in Choco on 10 August at 314 dead, 262 missing, 4,437 injured and 364 people rescued alive. Its latest count records 30,664 homes destroyed and 136,946 damaged, with 262,154 people affected across 471 municipalities in fifteen of the country’s thirty two departments. Estimates of the reconstruction bill published this week diverge, from about 6.4 billion dollars to the 9.5 billion figure attributed to President Abelardo de la Espriella, close to 2 percent of annual economic output.
• WHO allocates 70,000 Ebola vaccine doses to DR Congo – The International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision released 70,000 doses of Ervebo, of which 50,000 go to frontline and health workers and 20,000 to a phase three trial testing the vaccine against the Bundibugyo species now circulating. United Nations figures published on Thursday put the outbreak at 5,021 cases and 2,325 deaths, including more than 160 infected health workers of whom 40 have died. Ervebo is licensed against the Zaire species and its effect on Bundibugyo is unknown, with WHO saying early laboratory and animal data “suggest it may provide some protection”; Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the allocation “an important example of global solidarity in action”.

Bulletin automatically generated on August 20, 2026.