Elections Global

Pakistan goes to the polls in a widely watched national election, Donald Trump brings his fight to stay on the ballot to the US Supreme Court, and Israeli forces intensify strikes on Rafah in southern Gaza.   Plus, the special patrol protects Spain's brown bears and wary villagers.   By Edson Caldas

Reuters

Polling staff walks past police officers on guard outside a polling station in Peshawar, Pakistan. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz

ELECTIONS AROUND THE WORLD At least nine people were killed in militant attacks in Pakistan as the country voted in a general election after temporarily cutting mobile phone services and closing some land borders to maintain law and order. We look at how the electoral system works in Pakistan and the challenges the new government faces. In the US, Donald Trump's lawyers bring his fight to stay on the ballot to the Supreme Court. The justices will hear arguments in his appeal of a lower court's decision to disqualify him from Colorado's Republican presidential primary ballot after finding that he participated in an insurrection. MIDDLE EAST Israeli forces bombed areas in the southern border city of Rafah where more than half of Gaza's population is sheltering, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to end the war in the Palestinian enclave. He said the terms proposed by Hamas for a ceasefire were "delusional." Repeated US strikes against Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq are pushing the government to end the mission of the US-led coalition in the country, the prime minister's military spokesman Yahya Rasool said. He added that the coalition "has become a factor for instability." IN OTHER NEWS President Vladimir Putin granted an interview to Tucker Carlson, his first to an American TV host since before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On today's Reuters World News podcast, Russia Chief Political Correspondent Andrew Osborn discusses the benefits to Putin of addressing a US audience directly. The world experienced its hottest January, continuing a run of exceptional heat fueled by climate change, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service said. Last month surpassed the previous warmest January, which occurred in 2020, in records going back to 1950. Follow our environment coverage here. A volcano in Iceland erupted for the second time this year, pumping lava up to 80 meters (260 feet) into the air in what is the sixth outbreak on the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula since 2021. Live video from the area showed fountains of bright-orange molten rock spewing from fissures in the ground.