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The Ukrainian army said it shot down 10 drones on Saturday but another five had hit energy facilities, leaving some 1.5 million people without power. Later on, the exiled Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol said a strike had been carried out on the Russian-held city. Images shared by a Russian-installed official there show a big fire. Russia's drone attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa saw Moscow fire Iranian-made drones at key infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said. "The situation in the Odesa region is very difficult," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. "Unfortunately the hits were critical, so it takes more than just time to restore electricity. It doesn't take hours, but a few days." Since Octobe...

Peru’s newest president, Dina Boluarte, swore in her cabinet on Saturday just three days after becoming the country’s first female head of state, and asked each minister to pledge not to be corrupt while in office. The 17 ministers picked by Boluarte, who on Wednesday was elevated from vice-president to replace the ousted Pedro Castillo as the country’s leader, will be key to further inflaming or calming a South American country experiencing a seemingly endemic political crisis. Boluarte presented her centrist government amid demonstrations across Peru calling for her resignation and the scheduling of general elections to replace her and Congress. She asked each of the nine men and eight women to swear or promise to perform their duties “loyally and faithfully without committing acts of...

Following the awards ceremony in Oslo, the recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize took turns criticising Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine. Jailed Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian organisation Memorial, and the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties were announced as the recipients in October, and recognised for their work in documenting war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power. The Peace Prize is awarded annually on December 10, the day Alfred Nobel died in 1896, and the recipients will share the prize which is worth nearly $1m. Al Jazeera talked to Natallia Pinchuk, Bialiatski’s wife, who attended the ceremony on behalf of her jailed husband. “Ales and we all realise how important and risky it is to fulfil the mission of civil rights defender...

Two additional vessels are being deployed in what the French Coastguard describes as an "unprecedented" move. It follows criticism of the French response to the incident in November 2021 in which 27 people drowned trying to cross to the UK in a dinghy. More than 40,000 people have made such crossings this year - a record number. The French Coastguard says the Lapérouse survey vessel has just arrived in the port of Calais, while the Kermorvan patrol ship will be there in the next few days. It says that their deployment will strengthen the coastguard's rescue capabilities in the Channel-North Sea sector. Last month, the UK agreed to increase payments to France by £8m ($10m) more a year to £63m to try to stop channel crossings in sm...

Japan announced Friday that it will jointly develop its next-generation fighter jet with the U.K. and Italy as Tokyo looks to expand defense cooperation beyond its traditional ally, the United States. The Mitsubishi F-X fighter jet will replace the aging fleet of F-2 that Japan previously developed with the United States. Japan’s F-X and Britain’s Tempest, a successor to the Eurofighter Typhoon, will be combined into the next-generation combat aircraft for deployment in 2035. The deal will give Japan greater support in countering China’s growing assertiveness and allow Britain a bigger presence in the Indo-Pacific region. Friday’s fighter jet announcement came four days after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced spending targets aimed at building up Japan’s military capability, includ...

An unprecedented crisis of confidence is shaking a historic center of Catholicism in Germany — the Archdiocese of Cologne. Catholic believers have protested their deeply divisive archbishop and are leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports. While Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki’s personal fate is in the hands of Pope Francis, the drama has reverberations nationwide, given that the Cologne archdiocese has more Catholics than any other in Germany -- about 1.8 million. Its double-domed cathedral is an iconic tourist attraction and one of the oldest, most important pilgrimage sites of Northern Europe. And the crisis in Cologne, in which many thousands of Catholics in the region have left the church, is in some ways a microcosm of the issues playi...