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Last fall, a coalition of rebel groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a rapid-fire offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, quickly overrunning more than 100 military outposts and seizing several key towns along the country’s border with China.

This in itself was not unusual. Myanmar’s military government has faced insurgencies from ethnic and political militias for decades, and there’s been a major uptick in rebel activity since the 2021 coup, which brought the country’s current military junta to power, ending a short period of representative government. Over the past few months, the government has been rapidly losing ground to rebel forces in several regions of the country.

People who are poor, unemployed, homeless, immigrants, or exploited, as well as all those killed by past dictatorships and turned into rubbish by the "throwaway culture" of the present: the level of a society's civilisation is measured by the way they are treated, the Pope said.

Pope Francis reiterated the centrality of the vulnerable as well as the urgency of countering the triple "scourge" of corruption, abuse of power, and lawlessness—both in politics and in society—in his address on Wednesday with representatives of the DIALOP transversal dialogue project.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has helped in the fight against rebels for more than two decades, will completely withdraw from the country by December.

“After 25 years of presence, MONUSCO will definitively leave the DRC no later than the end of 2024,” Bintou Keita, head of the mission known as MONUSCO said at a media briefing in the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Saturday.

A landslide in north-west Colombia has killed at least 23 people and injured around 30 more, local authorities say.

The road connecting the cities of Medellín and Quibdo had been closed by several landslides, so many people stopped their cars to take shelter in a house near the community of Carmen de Atrato, a local official said.

Another landslide then struck the road, burying them and some of the vehicles.

Brussels wants to launch a bespoke EU mission to protect commercial vessels in the Red Sea from attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

In a document dated January 10 and seen by Euronews, the EU’s diplomatic service proposes sending "at least three" warships with "multi mission capabilities" to the region as early as next month.

The document recommends the "fast-tracking implementation" of an operation mandated to act "from the Red Sea to the Gulf," in order to protect maritime security in a region plagued by instability in recent weeks.

If I could have one wish for the new year, it would be for Britain’s criminal justice system to be reformed in a way that would ensure the arrest, prosecution and conviction of every single rapist in the country. I do not mean, of course, any man accused of rape, but every man who has actually committed rape.

One of the most prevalent and persuasive myths about rape and sexual assault is that a large number of allegations are false and men who have been publicly accused of rape but could not be convicted in a court of law are the victims of grave miscarriages of justice.

"We have issued the last package that we had withdrawn and for which we had funding," John Kirby said. White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby said at a briefing Thursday that "the assistance we were providing has come to a halt."

The White House official also said it is very important that Congress continues to approve the allocation of money to Ukraine. He stressed that Kiev needs help more urgently during the winter period.

The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is visiting Ukraine on Friday to meet his counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as the UK announced it would provide further military aid to the country over the coming year.

The UK has been one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters since Russia’s invasion and Sunak said Britain would boost its support in the next financial year to £2.5bn, an increase of £200m on the previous two years.

Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war in the biggest single release of captives since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ukrainian authorities said that 230 Ukrainian prisoners of war returned home in the first exchange in almost five months. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 248 Russian servicemen have been freed under the deal sponsored by the United Arab Emirates.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and 12 allies issued what amounted to a final warning to Houthi rebels on Wednesday to cease their attacks on vessels in the Red Sea or face potential targeted military action.

The Yemen-based militants have carried out at least 23 attacks in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza since Dec. 19.

A senior Biden administration official declined to detail rules of possible engagement if the attacks continue, but underscored that the Iranian-backed Houthis should “not anticipate another warning” from the U.S. and its allies.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva likes to boast he had a good first year after returning to the job. The economy is improving, Congress passed a long-overdue tax reform bill, rioters who wanted to oust him are now in jail, and his predecessor and foe Jair Bolsonaro is barred from running for office until 2030.

Still, the 78-year-old leader has struggled to boost his support among citizens and lawmakers. Some major setbacks, including a series of votes by Congress to override his vetoes, signaled that Lula’s future could be less productive in a Brazil almost evenly split between his supporters and Bolsonaro’s.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Despite its last-minute scheduling, the meeting at a bookstore in Russia’s westernmost city of Kaliningrad still drew about 60 people, with many outraged by a lawmaker’s efforts to ban abortions in local private clinics.

The weeknight turnout surprised and heartened Dasha Yakovleva, one of the organizers, amid recent crackdowns on political activism under President Vladimir Putin.

“Right now, there is no room for political action in Russia. The only place left is our kitchens,” Yakovleva, co-founder of the Feminitive Community women’s group, told The Associated Press. “And here, it was a public place, well-known in Kaliningrad, and everyone spoke out openly about how they see this measure, why they think it’s unjustified, inappropriate.”

Although abortion is still legal and widely available in Russia, recent attempts to restrict it have touched a nerve across the increasingly conservative country. Activists are urging supporters to make official complaints, circulating online petitions and even staging small protests.