International News Bulletin — August 23, 2026

Politics

• Kazakhstan votes for its new single-chamber parliament – Voters chose the 145 members of the Kurultai on Sunday in the first election held under the constitutional changes that took effect on 1 July. Seven parties competed under a 5 percent threshold, and pre-election surveys pointed to a commanding win for the newly formed pro-presidential Adilet party, with Auyl second. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly said it deployed close to 80 parliamentarians and staff from about 30 countries to observe; no results had been announced by late Sunday evening in Europe.
• Zelenskyy says a wartime vote would split Ukraine – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday rejected calls to hold elections while the war continues, describing a vote now as “a tsunami for the country that will split Ukraine”. The appeal had come from former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, dismissed in July, who argued in a video message that Ukrainian democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia. Ukrainian law bars elections under martial law.
• Iran’s army says its doctrine has turned offensive – Army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia told the IRNA news agency that Iran’s military doctrine had shifted “from a defensive posture toward an offensive one” during this year’s two rounds of war with the United States and Israel. He said the revised doctrine provides for a rapid and broad response to any attack rather than a general policy of preemptive strikes. Akraminia added that the army had approved rewards of 5 billion tomans, about 26,000 dollars, for the capture or killing of American soldiers in the event of a ground incursion.
• DR Congo and M23 agree a roadmap for peace talks – The Congolese government and the AFC/M23 movement issued a joint statement on Saturday setting out the sequence and timetable of further negotiations under the Doha framework agreement signed in 2025. The roadmap followed five days of talks in Switzerland from 17 to 21 August involving the United States, Qatar, Togo, Switzerland and the African Union Commission. The two sides also agreed on a standardised method for reporting ceasefire violations and on a mechanism to review implementation.
• Syria demands UN action over an Israeli drone strike – The Syrian foreign ministry condemned an Israeli drone strike on a civilian vehicle in Beit Jinn, in the countryside west of Damascus, calling it “a flagrant violation of Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity”. It asked the UN Security Council and the international community to halt what it called repeated Israeli violations. The strike, which wounded at least one person, followed eight Israeli air strikes earlier in the week on the runway of the Abu al-Duhur air base in Idlib province.

Economy

• United States imposes 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods – Duties of 50 percent on about 20 billion dollars of Canadian exports, roughly 5 percent of the total, took effect at 12:01 am Eastern time on Saturday after three days of talks in Washington ended without a deal. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada would answer “dollar for dollar” from 8 September with tariffs on American steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural machinery, paper and electronics, and called the terms on offer uneconomic and unfair. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada had declined to finalise the agreement on the terms already settled.
• Six EU governments push for a windfall tax on oil companies – The finance ministers of Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland and Portugal, together with Spain’s economy minister, wrote to their Irish counterpart, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, asking that a bloc-wide levy be put on the agenda of next month’s meeting of EU finance chiefs in Dublin. The letter, seen by AFP on Sunday, says refining margins have outpaced the rise in crude prices during what the signatories call one of the biggest supply shocks in decades. Union-level tax measures require unanimity, so six sponsors fall well short of adoption.
• Colombia reopens coal exports to Israel – The government of President Abelardo de la Espriella signed a decree authorising the resumption of coal shipments to Israel, reversing a ban imposed under his predecessor Gustavo Petro over the war in Gaza. Officials put the suspended trade at about 3.5 million tonnes a year, worth roughly 200 million dollars. Israel has since increased purchases from South Africa and expanded gas-fired generation, so shipments are not expected to return to previous levels immediately.
• Tanzania inaugurates its 2,115 megawatt Nyerere dam – President Samia Suluhu Hassan commissioned the Julius Nyerere hydropower plant in Rufiji district on Saturday alongside Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, standing in for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose country’s contractors built it. The nine-unit scheme cost about 7.45 trillion shillings, roughly 2.9 billion dollars, and was financed from domestic government resources. By the end of May it was already supplying about half the electricity fed into the national grid.

World News

• Landfill collapse in Conakry kills at least 30 – A mountainous refuse heap at the Dar es Salam dumpsite in Guinea’s capital gave way at about 3 am on Sunday after heavy rain, burying shacks built against it. The civil protection service gave a provisional toll of at least 30 dead and six seriously injured, and excavators were still searching the site during the day. Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the dump, which an army officer said had been scheduled for closure that same day.
• Wildfire near Reno forces 42,000 people from their homes – The Hawk Fire broke out near Verdi in Washoe County, Nevada, on Saturday morning and grew from about 2,500 acres to between 10,500 acres and more than 13,000 acres, depending on the update, with no containment reported. Authorities ordered about 42,000 residents to evacuate and warned another 45,000 to prepare, while Governor Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency and mobilised National Guard helicopter crews and 60 troops. Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam said a preliminary investigation found the fire was human-caused; at least six people were reported injured.
• Ukraine and Russia trade strikes after the Kryvyi Rih attack – Ukrainian drones hit targets across southern and western Russia and Russian-held areas on Saturday, killing at least ten people according to regional governors, among them two in Sevastopol when a drone struck a city bus and three in the Krasnodar port town of Yeysk. Russia’s defence ministry said it shot down 457 Ukrainian drones overnight, while Russian missiles and drones struck railway infrastructure in Kyiv and targets in the Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, killing at least seven. The toll from Friday’s drone strike on a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih rose to 16 dead and about 130 injured, with nine people still missing.
• Wrong-way crash on the A66 in England kills seven – A car travelling against the traffic collided with a marked Cleveland Police armed response vehicle at South Bank, near Middlesbrough, at about 3:39 am on Saturday. Constables Matthew Blades, 37, and Tom Clough, 38, died at the scene, as did all five occupants of the other car. The Independent Office for Police Conduct opened an investigation and said officers had sighted a suspicious vehicle and begun a pursuit before the collision.
• About 10,000 march in Stockholm for tougher climate policy – Organisers said roughly 10,000 people rallied in the Swedish capital on Sunday, weeks before the general election, with campaigner Greta Thunberg among them. Protesters accuse Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s government of jeopardising targets to cut transport emissions by 70 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2045, after it lowered fuel taxes and eased biofuel blending requirements. A survey cited by AFP found 37 percent of respondents naming the climate among their top election concerns, behind health care, education, crime and elderly care.

Bulletin automatically generated on August 23, 2026.