MANILA, Philippines — More Filipino lawmakers on Wednesday urged President Marcos to send Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan back to Beijing and declare him persona non grata as the word war between the two countries escalated with the Chinese Embassy in Manila engaging in social media combat on its Facebook page. On Wednesday alone, the embassy

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo’s doctors say that final tissue and molecular tests have confirmed that his lung cancer was localized and that no further treatment is needed, the Vatican said in a statement Wednesday. Pope Leo returned to the Vatican on Saturday, four days after having the lower lobe of his right lung removed. The surgery confirmed that Leo had lung adenocarcinoma , the most common type of lung cancer. The pope's personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone, and his surgeon, Dr. Stefano Margaritora, said in a statement that results of the tests on tissue removed during the pope's surgery confirmed the initial diagnosis and that the cancer had not spread. “A subsequent oncology assessment confirmed that no further treatment is necessary,” the doctors said.

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he believed an end to Russia's war on Ukraine could be closer than ever, as he thanked Russia's Vladimir Putin for freeing a detained American. "The other day I was talking to Vladimir Putin about settling his war with Ukraine, which I think we're getting closer to, by the way — maybe now the closest we've been," Trump told reporters at the White House. Trump has made similar claims before, but several rounds of talks and a summit with Putin in Alaska last year have failed to end the Ukraine war as Moscow sticks to its maximalist demands.

WASHINGTON — The commander of the U.S. Eighth Army in South Korea has said his troops must be prepared to respond to threats beyond the Korean Peninsula, stressing that it would be "irresponsible" to focus solely on threats facing the peninsula, according to a media report Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Joseph Hilbert made the remarks in an email interview with the South China Morning Post, underscoring the U.S. military's emphasis on strategic flexibility. Hilbert said it would be "irresponsible to focus myopically" on threats on the Korean Peninsula alone or to "suggest that we cannot do other things simply because we are in Korea," according to the report. "We view readiness as largely threat-agnostic. If we have a trained, ready force capable of executing the Army's assigned missions, we can apply that force against whatever threat is required," Hilbert was quoted as saying. "So, we train every day with our Korean allies against our principal threat, while also ensuring we remain available and ready for whatever the nation may require," he added. The remarks come amid growing attention to Wash

The tech-heavy Nasdaq led gains on Wednesday after quarterly results from SpaceX and Super Micro Computer improved appetite for AI-linked stocks, while Netflix slipped as its forecast failed to impress investors. Elon Musk's rocket and space technology firm rose 9.8 percent after he said on Tuesday that a merger of SpaceX and Tesla would be "a good idea". SpaceX also posted its first profit as a public company. Tesla shares were up 3.5 percent. Super Micro jumped 10.3 percent to the top of the S&P 500 after the AI server maker forecast quarterly revenue and profit margin above Wall Street estimates, signaling that AI demand remained resilient. Peers HPE and Dell rose 2.2 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively. Investors drew comfort from the reports as concerns over the profitability of the AI buildout triggered a selloff in AI-linked stocks last week, with data center operator CoreWeave at the center of the storm. Its shares were marginally down, suggesting lingering caution in the sector. "The sentiment around tech has shifted ... There's a lot of stress in the credit markets right now t

WASHINGTON — Government agencies and companies around the world shut down websites Wednesday after two critical flaws came to light involving PHP, a programming language that is the basis for a large share of the internet. PHP sits underneath popular web design platforms, so the weaknesses potentially affect a vast range of websites, from online stores and news outlets to government services. Wiz, one of the security firms that found the issues, estimated that PHP runs about 70 percent of the world's websites and said the flaws rank "among the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, and arguably in software history." The US National Security Agency told organizations to patch immediately or pull vulnerable systems offline. The flaws "often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database," the NSA said in a statement on X. Attackers could use them to take over web servers without needing a password. Volker Dusch, a security engineer at the PHP Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal it was the most serious problem PHP had faced in more than a decade, comparing it to

WASHINGTON — U.S. chip giant Nvidia Corp. said Wednesday that South Korea's Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. is joining its semiconductor substrate supply chain as part of a broader initiative to expand manufacturing capacity. Samsung Electro-Mechanics, the electronic components unit of Samsung Electronics Co., will initially provide production capacity from its existing operations in South Korea, while the collaboration will also support facility upgrades and new factories in Sejong and Busan, South Korea, according to Nvidia. By 2028, production allocated to Nvidia is projected to account for a significant portion of Samsung Electro-Mechanics' total annual package substrate production capacity, the U.S. company said. The South Korean company also issued a separate press release, calling the deal a strategic business partnership to strengthen the global artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor supply chain. Samsung Electro-Mechanics said it plans to supply Nvidia with package substrates for AI semiconductors under a multiyear agreement beginning in 2026. Separately, Nvidia and U.S.-base

Government websites across Europe went dark on Wednesday as operators raced to patch two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, one of the most widely used programming languages on the web. The developers of PHP said on Wednesday they would release patches for two critical vulnerabilities, and EU cybersecurity officials warned organisations unable to apply the fixes to take affected websites offline. Here is what you need to know: What is PHP? PHP is a programming language that runs websites. It works behind the scenes. When a user loads a page, the server running PHP assembles the content and sends the finished page to the browser. It is free, open source and maintained by volunteers. Site owners rarely interact with it directly. PHP runs nearly 70 percent of all websites whose programming language can be identified, according to web technology tracker W3Techs. It is the engine behind WordPress, the software that powers about 40 percent of all websites such as blogs, small business pages, government portals, online shops and news sites. What are the risks of the flaws? The two vulnerabilities ar

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Wednesday to resume three-way negotiations next month with Washington and Kyiv aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin official said. The Russian leader has agreed “in principle” to resume the talks after Nov. 10, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters following a meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff. The talks will focus on “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends,” Ushakov said. Witkoff's talks with Putin about Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine took place as Trump pushed Kyiv to make a deal that stops the fighting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has insisted that only a summit of leaders can break the impasse. The two armies remain locked on the battlefield, and the two countries pummel each other with daily long-range strikes. Representatives of the three countries held three rounds of negotiations early this year, meeting twice in Abu Dhabi in January and February, followed by further talks in Geneva

DIMONA, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the only way to remove the threat posed by Iran was to topple its government. "Iran wanted to destroy us; we stopped them. They wanted to produce nuclear bombs; we stopped them... Yet they persist," he said during an election rally in the southern town of Dimona. "Therefore, there is only one way to end this: by toppling this regime." "This is the directive I have issued to the Israel Defense Forces, to the Mossad, and to all our security branches," he added, without specifying when or how that directive would be executed. The sabre-rattling came as the premier headed into the last week of a tight race for re-election. Netanyahu had instructed the Israeli military to plan for resumed strikes against Iran earlier this month, according to sources cited by the Financial Times on Wednesday, but US President Donald Trump reportedly objected to the idea. The US leader has publicly said that he does not intend to restart the war, which Washington started in February alongside Israel, before the US mid-term electi

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron vowed on Wednesday to prevent a repeat of last weekend's violence at protests planned in the coming days, and dismissed as "stupid" and "unacceptable" comments from some foreign leaders about the unrest. France's main student union, UNEF, has called for further rallies on Saturday, while the Yellow Vest group, which emerged as a potent anti-establishment movement in 2018, has filed plans for a march through central Paris the same day. Efforts to ease social tensions showed little sign of progress, as unions pledged to press ahead with a general strike on November 5 to denounce the high cost of living and cuts to public services after government talks ended inconclusively. France was hit by some of the worst urban tumult in years on October 17 on the fringe of nationwide protests, shocking the nation both because of its scale and the apparent inability of police to contain it. Macron said he would meet intelligence officials and senior ministers on Thursday to discuss the crisis. "Those who want to cause disorder in city centres next Saturday will be pre

WASHINGTON — OpenAI has revealed that two of its artificial intelligence agents disabled or weakened systems built to catch them misbehaving, with one later denying it had done so. The cases are the latest in a string of safety scares at the world's top AI developers involving agents, AI programs that carry out tasks without human involvement. In a report released Tuesday, the ChatGPT maker said that during two internal coding jobs, its agents switched off or undermined tools for detecting incidents of AI models acting against human wishes. On October 3, an agent running on OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol model, which had been told not to send any messages on the workplace chat app, took that as license to switch off safety alerts meant for the company's security team while fixing a testing system. Three days later, a GPT-6 Astra agent stripped out its own monitor while copying code from another project, then told the human programmer it had done no such thing. The company said it had also seen several cases of agents launching software with monitoring switched off, exposing a gap in its oversight

President Lee Jae Myung met with World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday to discuss ways to enhance cooperation in healthcare, Lee's office said. The meeting at Cheong Wa Dae came as Tedros is visiting Seoul to attend the World Bio Summit 2026, which WHO is hosting in partnership with South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday. During the meeting, Lee stressed the need for South Korea to expand its role and contributions to the international community, presidential spokesperson Kim Sung-wan said in a written briefing. Lee also expressed hope that Seoul would continue to expand its cooperation with WHO in health security. The president asked Tedros to help ensure that more highly skilled South Koreans could contribute to the WHO, noting that South Korea has transformed itself from a recipient of international assistance into a major contributor. Tedros thanked South Korea for its efforts to strengthen cooperation with WHO and promote global health, saying he was well aware of the country's development experience. Stressing the importance of equita

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi Civil Aviation Authority announced that one Saudi resident was killed in attacks Wednesday evening on King Fahad International airport in Dammam in Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf near Bahrain and Qatar. The Civil Aviation authority also said eight people were injured and have been transferred to a hospital. The airport also suffered some material damages. Global flight-tracking service Flightradar24 said overnight Thursday on X that flights have been diverted away from the airport. King Fahad airport has been attacked previously amid a wider wave of Houthi missile and projectile strikes targeting major airports in Saudi Arabia. The Iranian-backed Houthis have not commented on this attack. The Saudi Coalition announced that it intercepted 4 drone attacks in the Eastern region. This comes as two people were killed in attack on a Saudi oil facility earlier Wednesday. The ministry said the two people killed were Nepali and Filipino nationals, while the injured were Pakistani and Indian nationals. The falling debris also sparked a fire in a contractor’s

Video game publisher Electronic Arts is shutting down the popular and influential game development studio BioWare after more than three decades. The upcoming “Mass Effect” game, the fifth since 2007, has been canceled. BioWare announced the closure on social media Wednesday following a report by Bloomberg that also said the company is laying off 400 people, including about 50 at BioWare. The Redwood Shores, California-based maker of popular titles like “Battlefield” and “The Sims” closed the $55 billion sale of its business to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, investment firm Silver Lake Partners and Affinity Partners, which is run by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Representatives for EA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the layoffs. “What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember,” the studio said via social media. “These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with characters, and made these worlds your own.” BioWare built its rep

The University of Arizona has suspended a fraternity's activities after a female student alleged two men sexually assaulted her at the fraternity's house in August. The Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter at the southern Arizona school was already on probation, but the university said it has now imposed an activities suspension, stating the fraternity poses a risk to the university community. An investigation into the allegations continues. “It has been determined that your organization presents a substantial risk to members of the university community,” said Associate Dean of Students Whitney Mohr in a letter sent to the fraternity on Wednesday. The local chapter did not respond to calls or emails, but the national fraternity organization said it had ordered members of the Arizona chapter to comply with any investigation. "Sigma Phi Epsilon does not tolerate sexual assault or sexual misconduct. The Fraternity has suspended those involved while the investigation proceeds," Brian Warren, chief executive officer of Sigma Phi Epsilon, said in a statement Tuesday. It didn't elaborate on the identi

ST PETERSBURG, Russia — Russia freed Stephen Hubbard, a retired US schoolteacher in custody since 2022, from prison on Wednesday and took him to St Petersburg to fly back to the United States, after talks that Washington said were a step toward ending the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement at a meeting in St Petersburg with US envoy Steve Witkoff, who later said the talks will continue toward planned technical-level discussions involving the US, Russia and Ukraine. Witkoff called Putin a "humanitarian" in thanking him for the move, a remark that drew sharp rebuke from Republican and Democratic lawmakers given Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The prisoner release comes as President Donald Trump's recent gestures toward Moscow, including a deal to buy Russian diesel and a waiver of new sanctions, have already sparked bipartisan pushback in the US Congress and worry in European capitals. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin had freed Hubbard, 74, at Trump's request, and that he had also taken into account the American's poor heal

SYDNEY — Meta and its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram are facing a class action law suit in Australia over allegations that addictive design features are harming children and teenagers. The suit filed in the Federal Court on behalf of eight applicants seeks to recover compensation for Facebook and Instagram users who were exposed to harmful content or developed an addiction to social media, law firm Minter Ellison and Litigation Lending said in a statement. The Federal Court in Sydney on Monday issued a suppression order stopping publication of details of the claim and the identity of the applicants, court documents show. "This proceeding raises important questions about the design and operation of social media platforms and their impact on children and teenagers in Australia," Minter Ellison partner William Nolan said in a statement. In August, Meta agreed to pay up to $17.7 billion in the United States to settle claims that it deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users.

Israeli forces detained U.S. Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander on Wednesday as he helped Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank , releasing him hours later while dozens of other volunteers, including a group of American rabbis, remained in custody. The incident was the latest in an annual olive harvest that has been marked by violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers attempting to gather their crops. The Israeli military said the farmers and volunteers had failed to seek prior approval for the harvest and were detained “due to the security risk posed by conducting an uncoordinated harvest near an Israeli community.” It later added that it viewed “the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.” Lander is running in the Nov. 3 elections to represent a heavily Democratic New York City district in the U.S. House of Representatives. “The occupation is a crime under international law," Lander wrote on social media after he was detained. “Harvesting olives isn’t

MONTREAL — The publisher of top-selling Haitian-Canadian writer Thelyson Orelien said Wednesday it had confirmed that he used artificial intelligence to help write his novel "It Was Either That or Die." Orelien has denied allegations that he used AI on his breakthrough novel and, last week, Canadian publisher Boreal said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. But on Wednesday, Boreal said it had conducted a further investigation into the allegations. "New information, confirmed over the past few days, indicates that artificial intelligence was used in the writing process" of the novel, a Boreal statement said. The publisher announced it was "ending its professional relationship" with Orelien. Boreal said it did not know the extent of AI's use in the writing process "and we will likely never have a definitive answer." It said it gathered all the working versions of the novel and hired an outside party to analyze the various drafts. "The results obtained this week revealed traces of AI tags in the metadata of certain documents," Boreal said. Before conducting this analysis, the publisher

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow the Trump administration to immediately enforce new medical restrictions for transgender people in federal prison. The decision leaves in place a lower-court block on the policy. It was adopted after an executive order from President Donald Trump, a Republican who has taken several steps to roll back transgender rights during his second term. The brief order did not detail its legal reasoning. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the policy to be enforced as the lawsuit played out in lower courts. The Supreme Court has previously allowed other Trump administration policies for transgender people to move ahead for now, including restrictions on military service and passport sex markers. Trump's order called on the Bureau of Prisons to revise its medical care policies so that federal funds aren’t spent “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” The new policy would halt surgeries, taper off hormones and end social accommodations like makeup and wigs. Prison

Meta Platforms has struck a deal with Mark Zuckerberg to keep him living in California after the CEO warned he was considering leaving the state that houses the company's headquarters if voters pass a wealth tax proposal next month. Under the deal, Zuckerberg will get non-voting shares he can sell to potentially foot a multi-billion-dollar tax bill in the event the proposal is approved, in exchange for a commitment to remain a resident of California, or wherever Meta maintains its headquarters, for eight years, Meta said on Wednesday. Zuckerberg, the world's sixth richest person according to Forbes, told Meta he was considering moving his primary residence outside California because Proposition 40, a ballot measure dubbed the "California wealth tax," could expose him to a massive tax liability, potentially forcing him to sell voting shares to pay it. Proposition 40, which asks Californians whether to impose a one-time 5% tax on the state's billionaires, is far from certain to pass, political analysts say. The state is home to as many as 250 billionaires collectively worth upwards of $2

A hugely popular programming language across the internet is connected to mass outages.

Donald Trump says he considered renaming the Atlantic Ocean ‘Trump Ocean’ but claims Google CEO Sundar Pichai rejected the proposal.

Under Stage I of GRAP, schools across Delhi and the NCR remain fully open and operational.

AI uncovered long-hidden programming flaws, triggering a rare global cyber-security response.

NDTV World Summit 2026 LIVE Updates: The 2026 edition of NDTV's flagship event begins on Friday, with PM Modi delivering the keynote address.

Turkish and Pakistani officials have also insisted that the pact isn't against Iran or any other country, but haven't said how they would react if attacked by Iran.

India alerts nationals in France as protests trigger curfews and clashes

The student told police she remembers feeling one man's breath on her face and had trouble swallowing the next morning due to possible strangulation.

Delhi-NCR has imposed its first seasonal GRAP Stage I restrictions as air quality worsened to poor, with AQI at 244 on 21 October. Measures target dust, vehicle emissions and waste burning.

China targeting India with tunnel-boring machine curbs. Is Delhi ready for the drill?

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised India as a refining superpower during his visit to Reliance's Jamnagar refinery. Discussions with Mukesh and Anant Ambani focused on energy collaboration, supply chain diversification, and enhancing U.S.-India commercial ties.Watch our LIVE coverage for the latest developments from Jamnagar and the broader India-US relationship. n18oc_indian18oc_world

Trump missed the Nobel Peace Prize. Now he wants a Pulitzer for his 'writing'

The average selling price of a mobile phone in Singapore has risen nearly 12 per cent since 2023, reaching S$1,000 this year, data shows.

The reboot revives Ryan Murphy's television series, which premiered in 2009 and ran for six seasons through 2015.

American national Stephen Hubbard, who was jailed in Russia after being accused of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, has reportedly been released following a conversation between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.Hubbard's release has drawn attention amid ongoing tensions between Washington and Moscow over the war in Ukraine. n18oc_breaking-newsn18oc_world News18 Mobile App - https://onelink.to/desc-youtube

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for misleading Facebook users about data privacy. Meta plans to appeal.

Global commitments to cut planet-heating emissions are falling far short of the Paris climate goals and put the world on course for 2.6C warming this century, the UN warned Wednesday.

China and Russia condemn what they call external interference in Eurasia, casting it as the main threat to regional stability in a joint statement.