AFP UK

Busan (South Korea) (AFP) – An Air China Plane carrying Chinese President Xi lands in South Korea ahead of a closely watched meeting with his American counterpart Donald Trump. IMAGES

Geer (AFP) – In Belgium, trucks haul away heavy harvests of potatoes while farmers count their losses. Prices for industrial potatoes have sunk far below production costs, squeezed by energy hikes and weak demand for Europe’s famous fries.

(AFP) – Ferocious winds and torrential rain hit Jamaica as Hurricane Melissa made landfall, the worst storm ever to strike the island nation and one of the most powerful hurricanes on record. Cubans waded through flooded houses, and authorities in Haiti reported 10 dead as Hurricane Melissa blasted across the Caribbean after devastating swaths of Jamaica.

Paris (AFP) – France joins calls for the truce in Gaza to be restored “as soon as possible,” following deadly overnight Israeli air strikes. “The ceasefire is under threat,” says French government spokesperson Maud Bregeon, quoting Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot. Israel has accused Hamas of breaching a ceasefire that started on October 10 by not returning the bodies of dead hostages fast enough and killing an Israeli soldier.

Bukarest (AFP) – Washington has told Romania and allies it will reduce some US troops deployed on NATO’s eastern flank, says Romania’s defence minister, a move a NATO official swiftly downplayed to AFP. This latest announcement comes after reports earlier this year that Washington could withdraw 10,000 troops from eastern Europe.

Israel-Gaza-Grenze (AFP) – Palestinians search through the rubble and inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike that hit a house in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip. Israel says it has carried out strikes on dozens of Hamas targets following the death of a soldier, with Gaza experiencing its deadliest night of bombing since a US-brokered truce went into effect earlier this month.

Weltraum (AFP) – Footage supplied by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos shows cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky stepping outside the International Space Station to install scientific instruments on its exterior during a planned spacewalk.

In Ukraine (AFP) – Not far from Kupiansk, a key logistics hub once captured by Russia and retaken by Kyiv in autumn 2022, Ukrainian soldiers crammed in a command centre search for Russian soldiers and strike them with first-person view (FPV) drones. Since Russia started attacking the city with FPVs tethered to fibre optic cables, however, their hold is slipping away. “Every day, something flies in,” Vitaliy Bardas, an evacuee from Kupiansk, tells AFP.

Paris (AFP) – Laurent Lafon, President of the French Senate’s Culture Committee, says after a visit to the Louvre’s security installations that the museum’s security is “not fit for a museum worthy of the 21st century.” The comments come after a spectacular heist saw precious crown jewels stolen, for which two suspected robbers have since been detained.

Saint Petersburg (AFP) – A Saint Petersburg’s court fines a teenage street singer 30,000 rubles (325 eur) on a charge of “discrediting the army” for performing a song by singers deemed “foreign agents” in Russia by law. “It’s astonishing,” says a supporter outside the courtroom. “The sheer insanity of this case itself also motivates people to come and draw attention to it.”

portsudan (Sudan) (AFP) – Sudan army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announces that “the army has withdrawn from El-Fasher”, following an announcement the city was seized by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group after more than 18 months of brutal siege warfare. The city’s capture gives the group control over every state capital in the vast Darfur region.

Hue (Vietnam) (AFP) – Centuries-old buildings in Vietnam’s former imperial city of Hue, a UNESCO world heritage site, are flooded by brown water as heavy rainfall inundates the country’s central coastal region since the weekend.