The biggest world and national stories of the day, summarized in plain language with links to the original reporting, plus the Bay Area angle where there is one.
Lawmakers voted 227 to 164 to move Italy to a fully proportional system with a big seat bonus for any bloc that tops 42%. The opposition calls it self-serving and plans a court challenge, but Meloni's coalition is now trailing in the polls.
Yandex says a drone attack sparked a fire at its data center in Sasovo, southeast of Moscow, and that it had to halt all operations there. No one was hurt, and the company says its core consumer services kept running.
A Taiwanese charter and flight-training company says its patrol plane tracked a fishing boat that doubles as a Chinese militia vessel off Hualien in August, alongside a coast guard cutter and a research ship. Taiwan's officials confirmed the vessels were there, Reuters reported.
Ukrainian officials say 33 people died and 18 were wounded when a Russian guided bomb struck two passenger buses Thursday morning. It came a day after a missile strike on an apartment block in Pryluky killed 22, including five children.
A British Antarctic Survey study finds occupied chinstrap nests on the remote volcanic island fell 63% from 2011 to 2025, most likely because warming seas left less krill. The title of biggest colony now passes to Cape Adare in the Ross Sea.
The Swedish Academy honored the 76-year-old for genre-crossing books that rework ancient Greek myth and poetry into new forms. She got the call while in Iceland, the Academy said, 'listening to the wind.'
Iran's Foreign Ministry says the two countries have fixed the exact entry and exit lanes and will notify the relevant international maritime body. At the same time a Revolutionary Guards adviser insists the strait stays closed, and analysts say the agreement doesn't guarantee safe passage.
Twenty British diplomats, including the consul general, are leaving after Israel retaliated for UK sanctions on West Bank settlements. Seven may stay, and London says it won't respond in kind while talks continue.
Maroš Šefčovič is in Beijing for two days of talks with China's commerce minister as European lawmakers, France and Germany push for a harder line on surging Chinese imports. China warns that protectionism will backfire.
The IOC published its roadmap for picking the 2036 Summer Games host, set an Oct. 31 cutoff for new contenders and plans to choose a winner in mid-2029.
Jared Kushner and Putin adviser Kirill Dmitriev have talked about a U.S. stake in the sanctioned gas pipelines to Germany. The White House downplays it, Berlin says no, and a U.S. official calls a deal unlikely for now.
The crowd had lined up after South Africa's top court struck down rules used to turn away people without proper visas. Police fired stun grenades, and the U.S. consulate warned of looting targeting foreigners downtown.
Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa announced the cabinet decision alongside India's visiting foreign minister, who called New Delhi supportive but said admission is up to the whole bloc.
The outreach began with freeing a detained American and focuses on scam centers that target Americans, but rare earth minerals are also on the table, Reuters reports. Critics say it hands the generals legitimacy.
The first round had been set for Dec. 13. Fewer than 800,000 of roughly 7 million eligible Haitians have registered, and the electoral council has not named a new date.
Police in New Delhi carried Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra onto buses as opposition lawmakers tried to reach a protest site, escalating a fight over a nationwide voter-roll revision that has removed more than 130 million names from draft lists.
A 15-year-old who stabbed eight girls at her former middle school in Istanbul's Başakşehir district was ordered held by a court on Wednesday, and her mother and father were also jailed pending trial.
The bank's new regional update says the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan region is the only one where poverty is still above pre-pandemic levels, and it expects the regional economy to shrink 2.1% this year.
The 82-year-old University of Wisconsin–Madison physicist was honored for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and its discovery of high-energy neutrinos from deep space, an idea he says skeptics once called cute but unworkable.
Ofcom says it will examine whether Meta properly assessed risks to users and children before rolling out its disappearing-photo feature in May. Meta says it did a risk analysis and briefed the regulator before launch.
One ship sank with its crew missing and another caught fire inside Bulgaria's maritime zone, a day after a Turkish-owned grain carrier went down off Romania. Turkey's Erdogan raised Black Sea safety in a call with Putin.
A last-minute deal between the ruling party and the main opposition put an economist and academy head in the presidency with 81 votes, one more than needed, after lawmakers first voted to curb a Hague war crimes court.
The foreign minister began proceedings to add a Russian citizen to the country's banned list after officials accused Ragozin of voicing views that serve Moscow's interests.
Pressed in Athens about reports that Washington discouraged governments from helping the Nobel laureate get home, the secretary of state called the premise false.
The attack, reported by the UK's maritime security office, happened far from the Strait of Hormuz, in waters where U.S. forces have only a thin presence, according to maritime trade press.
An analyst with Denmark's domestic intelligence service said Moscow stepped up attacks on firms supplying Ukraine this summer, often using recruits found on Telegram. Russia's embassy rejected the claims.
The Pacific storm is forecast to weaken but could reach the U.S.-Mexico border region around Sunday with tropical-storm-force winds, coastal flooding, dangerous surf and the first real rain after a punishing heat wave, the National Hurricane Center says.
The PTI convoy led by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's chief minister entered its fourth day after talks with the government collapsed, while authorities ringed Islamabad with shipping containers and vowed marchers would not get in, Pakistani outlets report.
Saudi officials say attacks at Abha and Riyadh's King Khalid airport killed three people and wounded dozens, as fighting for control of Yemen's Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait intensifies, the AP reports.
A Kenyan man who fell ill in Congo died in a Nairobi hospital after traveling through Uganda. Officials are racing to trace dozens of contacts, while doctors and Africa's top health agency ask why nobody caught his illness at the border.
Moscow told the World Health Organization there is "no plague case" in Irkutsk, but reports of a second employee with unexplained pneumonia have the U.S., the EU and the WHO asking for more transparency.
Riyadh has asked Damascus to deploy forces against the Iran-backed Houthis, a U.S. official told Reuters, but any Syrian role carries real risks for a government still rebuilding its own army.
France's Henri Kagan and Japan's Kenso Soai share the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for reactions that favor one mirror-image form of a molecule, work that helps explain a century-old puzzle about life and now shapes how medicines are made.
After a 15-year-old lost a hand in a clash with riot police, the government suspended stun grenades at student protests. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu promised concrete measures by month's end, but student unions are calling for more marches Thursday.
Memorials ran from the Nova festival site to a packed evening ceremony in Tel Aviv, while in Gaza most of the population remains displaced and a year-old ceasefire has not brought peace.
The vice president's wording stops short of demanding Iran end enrichment entirely, but Tehran says its bigger concerns are sanctions, the U.S. naval blockade and frozen assets, as the war enters its eighth month.
The overnight attack hit Kyiv and about a dozen regions as Ukraine scrambles for scarce Patriot interceptors, according to Associated Press and Reuters reporting published by CBC News.
A missile landed near the runway minutes before a flight from Cairo was due, as fighting around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait displaces more than 200,000 people, Reuters reports.
