Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Women call for end to domestic violence after lockdowns bring more attacks

Women around the world on Wednesday marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, highlighting how lockdowns due to the pandemic had left many trapped with their abusers and exposed to greater danger. The United Nations said that since the outbreak of COVID-19, all types of violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, had intensified, with shelters at capacity and helplines in some places seeing a five-fold rise in calls. U.N. mulls U.S. proposal to streamline, lengthen North Korea aid exemptions

A United Nations Security Council sanctions committee is considering a U.S. proposal to streamline and lengthen exemptions from U.N. sanctions on North Korea for humanitarian aid groups working in the isolated Asian state. The updates to an implementation assistance note - first issued in August 2018 - will be approved by the council's 15-member North Korea sanctions committee on Friday if there are no objections, diplomats said. The committee operates by consensus. African envoys head for Ethiopia as ultimatum expires for assault

African envoys went to Ethiopia to plead for peace on Wednesday, hours before an ultimatum was to expire for Tigrayan forces to surrender or face an assault on the northern region's capital that rights groups fear could bring huge civilian casualties. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government set a 72-hour ultimatum on Sunday for the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) to lay down its arms or face an assault on Mekelle, the highland regional capital city of 500,000 people. Sudan's former PM Sadiq al-Mahdi dies of coronavirus in UAE: sources

Leading Sudanese politician and former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi has died in hospital in the United Arab Emirates after being infected with coronavirus, family sources said early on Thursday. Mahdi, 84, was Sudan's last democratically elected prime minister and was overthrown in 1989 in the military coup that bought former president Omar al-Bashir to power. American woman charged with hiding money transfers to Syria-based militants

U.S. federal prosecutors have charged a New Jersey woman with concealing multiple efforts to transfer money to Islamist militants in Syria connected to the Nusra Front, a onetime al Qaeda affiliate based in Syria's Idlib province. Maria Bell, 53, of Hopatcong, New Jersey, was accused in a criminal complaint of knowingly concealing her involvement in providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, namely al-Nusra. Iran swaps jailed British-Australian academic with Iranians held abroad - TV

Iran has exchanged a jailed British-Australian academic, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, with three Iranians who had been detained abroad, Iran's state broadcaster IRIB reported on Wednesday. Moore-Gilbert, a specialist in Middle East politics at the University of Melbourne, was detained in Iran in September, 2018 and had been serving a 10-year sentence for espionage. Biden urged to extend U.S.-Russia arms treaty for full 5 years without conditions

Arms control advocates are urging Joe Biden to extend the last U.S.-Russian treaty limiting deployed strategic nuclear arms for five years, but some experts argue the U.S. president-elect should go for a shorter period to maintain leverage over Moscow. Upon taking office on Jan. 20, Biden faces an immediate decision on whether to extend the 2010 New START pact, which otherwise expires 16 days later, freeing Washington and Moscow to deploy unlimited numbers of strategic nuclear warheads and the missiles, submarines and bombers to deliver them. Global coronavirus cases surpass 60 million infections – Reuters tally

The global tally of confirmed coronavirus cases hit 60 million on Wednesday, with the pace of new infections accelerating and the United States reporting record numbers of hospitalizations, according to a Reuters tally. Officials in the United States, the worst-affected country in the world, urged Americans to stay home for the imminent Thanksgiving holiday as soaring numbers of COVID-19 patients pushed medical professionals to the brink. Maradona, football legend, was a champion of Latin America's left

Argentina football legend Diego Maradona said his hero, late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro - whom he considered a "second father" and whose face he had tattooed on his leg - once urged him to go into politics. Maradona, who died on Wednesday aged 60, never fulfilled those aspirations but he did play a role in championing leftist leaders across Latin America - such as Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales - and in helping to lend them broader international appeal. Brazilian state sues Carrefour unit for $38 million in damages for beating death of Black man

A state attorney in southern Brazil is suing a unit of France's Carrefour SA seeking 200 million reais ($37.6 million) in damages after security guards beat a Black man to death at one of its stores. On Friday, a widely circulated video showed security guards at a Carrefour Brasil store in the city of Porto Alegre brutally beating João Alberto Silveira Freitas, following an argument between him and a store employee.