Police banned protests in parts of Paris on Thursday, as France braces for more demonstrations just days after student and other rallies degenerated into some of the worst street unrest in years tinyurl.com/52fn5jpj

Missiles strike Kyiv shortly after Russia says it is ready to hold talks with Ukraine and US. As Trump's envoy Witkoff called Putin a "humanitarian", residents of Ukraine's capital fled into shelters during the overnight barrage of missile strikes tinyurl.com/47w9htch

Firestorm over US political ad. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, faces barrage of criticism over running an ad featuring Democratic rival Amy Acton's estranged mother, whose husband was charged with raping Acton when she was a child tinyurl.com/2pyhf8bv

Meta fined $25 billion in New Mexico for deceiving users in a case related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to media reports. The penalty comes a couple of months after Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle claims brought by 48 other states tinyurl.com/bdhbr5s2

Elon Musk threatens Democrats who want to investigate alleged corruption and his role in the US government if they win control of Congress next month. "Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them” tinyurl.com/yjfn3u3k

An Ebola case detected in Nigeria is confirmed as the same strain behind a major DR Congo outbreak, marking the spread of the deadly disease to points across Africa. tinyurl.com/4nksdz2w

#UPDATE US State Department spokesman says Wednesday's order is for the departure of non-emergency embassy staff and their families in Saudi Arabia only tinyurl.com/mpk9r4wd

Defying claims that only top-spending clubs can win the World Series, two relatively frugal teams—the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers—kick off their seven-game series for the MLB crown on Friday. tinyurl.com/yaw5s9r2

UAE nominates foreign ministry official Lana Nusseibeh to be next UN secretary-general, as current candidates face Security Council headwinds tinyurl.com/4t8jrhc7

Publisher says probe has confirmed top-selling Haitian-Canadian author used artificial intelligence to write novel tinyurl.com/yc5fu6fz

#UPDATE US State Department says order to leave Saudi Arabia applies to non-emergency embassy staff and families tinyurl.com/bdejwutd

Protests in parts of Paris to be banned on Thursday as France reels from some of its worst street unrest in years. tinyurl.com/3hu58f9c

#BREAKING US embassy staff and families ordered to leave Saudi Arabia, with families of embassy staff in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain also ordered to leave, diplomatic source tells AFP

Champagne winegrowers drop over-two-decade study into expanding the area that can produce France's most famous fizz due to climate change, declining consumption and economic uncertainty tinyurl.com/yc5jdywj

OpenAI reveals two of its artificial intelligence agents disabled or weakened systems built to catch them misbehaving, with one later denying it had done so. tinyurl.com/3kuebn67 (updated link)

Link to full story: tinyurl.com/59kvrwne

Government agencies and companies around the world have shut down websites after two critical flaws came to light involving PHP, a programming language that is the basis for a large share of the internet. The US National Security Agency told organisations 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. 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. The discovery came amid a surge in software security disclosures driven by increasingly powerful AI models, with the number of vulnerabilities found in 2026 on track to roughly double last year's record total. PHP volunteers have released a fix. "If you run PHP, it is imperative that you update now," the PHP Foundation, which funds developers working on the language, said in a blog post.

🇦🇺 Australian lawmaker wounded in attack has lost both her legs, husband says Australian lawmaker Helen Haines has had both legs amputated after being hit by a car, her husband said, in what police described as a targeted attack.

🇦🇷 🇪🇸 Argentina's far-right President Javier Milei has called Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez a "dictator" in a visit to Madrid, urging voters to oust the Socialist leader in upcoming elections. ➡️ u.afp.com/SCjK

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Russia is open to resuming trilateral talks with Washington and Kyiv towards ending the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said after Vladimir Putin met US special envoy Steve Witkoff Wednesday, but decried little "substance" in new Ukrainian and European approaches. ➡️ u.afp.com/SCVD