International news from Friday, April 4th, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency on Thursday, according to two officials familiar with the decision, and congressional Democrats denounced the removal of the nonpartisan official from a top security post.

Israel stepped up airstrikes on Syria, declaring the attacks a warning to the new rulers in Damascus as it accused their ally Turkey of trying to turn the country into a Turkish protectorate.

The Trump administration moved forward with the sale of more than 20,000 US-made assault rifles to Israel last month, according to a document seen by Reuters, pushing ahead with a sale that the administration of former president Joe Biden had delayed.

The Israeli military said on Friday it had killed Hassan Farhat, a commander of Palestinian group Hamas, in the Sidon region of southern Lebanon.

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Friday, killing at least four people and injuring 35 in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, regional officials said.

Myanmar's junta leader attended a regional summit in Bangkok on Friday, a week after a massive earthquake devastated parts of the impoverished war-torn country, killing more than 3,100, and spurring an appeal for help by the United Nations chief.

Hackers targeting Australia's major pension funds in a series of coordinated attacks have stolen savings from some members at the biggest fund and compromised more than 20,000 accounts in A$4.2 trillion (AED 10.3 trillion) retirement savings sector.

South Korea's Constitutional Court on Friday decided to oust President Yoon Suk Yeol, upholding parliament's impeachment motion over his short-lived imposition of martial law last year that sparked the country's worst political crisis in decades.