Britain’s King Charles “required a short period of observation in hospital” on Thursday after experiencing “temporary side effects” from a scheduled cancer treatment in the morning, Buckingham Palace has said.

“His Majesty has now returned to Clarence House and as a precautionary measure, acting on medical advice, tomorrow’s diary program will also be rescheduled,” the palace said in a statement.

“His Majesty would like to send his apologies to all those who may be inconvenienced or disappointed as a result,” it added.

The King was set to receive credentials from the ambassadors of three countries on Thursday, and was scheduled to undertake four public engagements in Birmingham, central England, on Friday.

Charles’ cancer diagnosis was first announced in February last year, after he underwent a “corrective procedure” for a benign enlarged prostate the month before.

He briefly stepped away from public-facing duties while he received treatment for the undisclosed form of cancer, returning to them a few months later in April 2024. In his first official engagement since his diagnosis, Charles visited a cancer treatment center, where he leaned on his own personal experience when talking to medical teams as well as while connecting with patients and their families.

Thousands of people sent the King messages of support when he was first diagnosed, which he said “reduced me to tears,” according to a statement released by Buckingham Palace at the time. “Such kind thoughts are the greatest comfort and encouragement,” Charles said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ukraine’s European allies say now is not the time for lifting sanctions on Russia, after Moscow said it would only agree to a US-brokered deal on ending fighting in the Black Sea if some sanctions were eased.

The leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany all affirmed at a summit on Thursday that Europe will not lift sanctions on Russia – a strong and seemingly coordinated message to the Trump administration, which has said it is still evaluating the Kremlin’s demands.

They spoke after a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing” in Paris which discussed how to bolster support for Kyiv and what role they might play if a peace deal is struck with Russia.

While divisions remain among the leaders about how to respond, they spoke in unison on Russia’s demand to ease sanctions.

“(There is) complete clarity that now is not the time for lifting of sanctions,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.

“Quite the contrary – what we discussed is how we can increase sanctions to support the US initiative, to bring Russia to the table through further pressure from this group of countries,” the British Prime Minister said, still striking a conciliatory tone toward the United States.

Starmer said the meeting involved more than 30 countries, including Ukraine’s European allies and NATO officials. He described the meeting as “very constructive.”

Echoing Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said stopping sanctions would be a “serious mistake.”

“It makes no sense to end the sanctions until peace has actually been achieved, and unfortunately we are still a long way from that, as you can see.”

This week the US announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to end fighting in the Black Sea. But Moscow soon followed up the statement by saying it would only implement the deal once some of the sanctions imposed on Russian banks and exports over its invasion of Ukraine are lifted.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the United States is “going to evaluate” Russia’s conditions to agreeing to a Black Sea partial ceasefire.

When the US negotiators return from Saudi Arabia, Rubio said, they will be “sitting down, going through the proposals, getting their impressions of the conversations, so we can more fully understand what the Russian position is, or what their ask is in exchange.”

“There was absolute clarity that Russia is trying to delay, is playing games. And we have to be absolutely clear about that,” Starmer added, speaking to reporters alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky also called for “more pressure” and “more packages of sanctions” on Russia. Countries at the summit in Paris agreed on “no lifting of any kind of sanctions until Russia will stop this war,” Zelensky said.

“They’re dragging-out the talks and trying to get the US stuck in endless, pointless discussions about fake ‘conditions’ just to buy time and then try to grab more land,” Zelensky added in a social media post, highlighting that Ukrainian intelligence indicates Russian forces are getting ready for new offensives against the Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine.

“Putin wants to negotiate over territory from a stronger position. He’s thinking only about war,” Zelensky said.

‘Reassurance forces’

France also shed more light on a proposal to send forces drawn from European armies to Ukraine in the event that a ceasefire is reached.

France and the United Kingdom previously floated the idea of sending peacekeepers to Ukraine and said they would be willing to put boots on the ground. But their latest discussions have honed in an alternate term: “reassurance forces.”

“These would be forces from a number of states… present in strategic locations pre-identified with the Ukrainians which would provide long-term support, reassurance for the armies and act as a deterrent to potential Russian aggression,” Macron said Thursday, adding that the forces would never serve as a “substitution for the Ukrainian army.”

The French president also announced plans for a French-British team to be sent to Ukraine to help Kyiv “prepare the format of tomorrow’s Ukrainian army.”

The United States is not currently a member of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ with Macron acknowledging that although he “hopes” the US would support a European deployment to Ukraine, Europe needs to “prepare for a situation where they [the US] will not commit” to Ukraine’s security.

Russia has repeatedly said it would consider any foreign military presence in Ukraine “unacceptable.”

Four people were killed Thursday when a tourist submarine sank off Egypt’s Red Sea resort city of Hurghada, according to a Facebook post by the Russian embassy in Egypt.

It is unclear if all four were Russian, but the embassy said that they were aboard a submarine that carried 45 Russian tourists.

Local Egyptian media reported earlier Thursday that six people were killed in the incident. Those killed were foreign nationals, Reuters said, citing the Hurghada governorate office.

The incident occurred at 10:00 a.m. local time Thursday, when the submarine Sindbad “crashed at a distance of 1 km from the shore,” the embassy said.

Minors were among the passengers on the submarine, which belonged to a hotel bearing the same name, but it is unclear if they are among the fatalities.

The vessel was on a regular underwater excursion to inspect the coral reef, the embassy added.

“According to initial data, most of those on board were rescued and taken to their hotels and hospitals in Hurghada,” the embassy said, adding that “the fate of several tourists is being clarified.”

“Diplomats from the Consulate General are on the pier of the Sindbad Hotel,” the embassy said.

‘Years of experience’

The operator of the submarine has an “expert team” with “years of experience,” according to its website, adding that its submarines were “engineered in Finland to sustain underwater pressure up to 75m, ensuring safety and reliability.”

In an emergency, the company says “oxygen masks are located overhead and life vests under the seats.”

Sindbad Submarines says it has two “recreational submarines” in its fleet, each of which could carry 44 passengers and two pilots with a “sizable round viewing window” for each passenger.

The vessel could reach a depth of 25 meters below sea level for 40 minutes, allowing passengers to explore “500 meters of coral reef and its marine inhabitant.”

The “spacious air-conditioned cabin” is also said to feature “comfortable seats and personal TV monitors.”

In November, at least 16 people went missing after a tourist yacht sank in the Red Sea following warnings about rough seas. At the time, it was not immediately clear what caused the four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht to sink.

Egypt’s tourism economy is among its key sources of revenue.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

It’s been 30 years, but Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka still remembers the first time she ever saw a mountain gorilla.

It was the summer of 1994. Deep in the jungle of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, the then-23-year-old student was hundreds of miles from her home in the country’s capital, Kampala.

Bwindi is one of only two places in the world where mountain gorillas live, and after graduating from the Royal Veterinary College in London, Kalema-Zikusoka had her heart set on seeing the great apes. For the first week of her month-long placement, she’d been stuck at base camp with a terrible cold, unable to join the jungle treks, with her frustration and anticipation rising every day.

Finally, after what felt like endless waiting, Kalema-Zikusoka was cleared to hike.

Pushing through tangled vines and roots in the thick forest, she could hear bubbling waterfalls, birds squawking, and chimpanzees hooting. But gorillas, she says, are silent.

“You don’t hear them, but you see their trails as you’re walking,” says Kalema-Zikusoka. “You can be looking for them, thinking will I ever see them? Then suddenly — they’re there. It’s such a magical feeling.”

Sitting in a forest clearing was a silverback gorilla, called Kacupira.

“When I got to see Kacupira, having wanted to see gorillas for so long — suddenly this gorilla was sitting there chewing on a piece of bark, and I was like, ‘wow,’” recalls Kalema-Zikusoka, now 55.

“I looked into his very intelligent brown eyes, and I felt a really deep connection. He was just willing to let us into his presence, and not at all threatening.”

After this encounter, Kalema-Zikusoka decided to stay at Bwindi. Her one-month summer placement turned into three decades of conservation work at the park, where she became the nation’s first wildlife veterinarian in 1996. With her help, Bwindi’s gorilla population grew from less than 300 to 459, and the subspecies is no longer critically endangered, according to the IUCN Red List.

“The mountain gorillas have really shaped my life,” says Kalema-Zikusoka. And in turn, “the gorillas have really transformed Uganda, and brought Ugandan conservation and tourism back on the map.”

A violent history

For millennia, mountain gorillas roamed across the forests of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But in the last 100 years, rampant deforestation, poaching, and conflicts have left them on the brink of extinction, clinging to just two surviving habitats: Bwindi and the Virungas.

In the 1970s, Uganda’s gorillas faced another existential threat. The eight-year dictatorship of Idi Amin — who was known as the “Butcher of Uganda” for his brutality — devastated the country, killing up to 300,000 people, destroying land and resources, and slaughtering much of the nation’s wildlife.

Kalema-Zikusoka was just two years old at the time of the military coup, and her father was a minister in the government that was overthrown by Amin.

“When Amin came into power, my dad was one of the first victims,” she recalls. “He was abducted when he was taking a relative back home; he was followed by a vehicle, and never seen again.”

Growing up in political turmoil, Kalema-Zikusoka found solace with her many household pets: her older siblings often rescued stray cats and dogs, who became her companions, and she decided at “a very young age” that she wanted to be a veterinarian. It was her neighbor’s pet monkey, Poncho, that sparked her interest in primates: the mischievous creature would sneak in through the window and pull the dog’s tail, steal food, and even plunk keys on the piano.

As a teenager, Kalema-Zikusoka joined her school’s wildlife club, and on a field trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park she saw firsthand how little wildlife remained, even in conservation areas. “I started thinking to myself, why can’t I become a vet who brings back the wildlife to Uganda?”

While Kalema-Zikusoka’s veterinarian studies took her to the UK, she always planned to return to Uganda and build on the work of her father.

“When I was old enough to understand what had happened to him, I felt like I wanted to continue his dream, his legacy, of a prosperous Uganda, through my passion for wildlife.”

Health for all

Less than a year after Kalema-Zikusoka began working at Bwindi, there was an outbreak of an unknown skin disease among the gorillas: they were losing hair and developing white, scaly skin. Kalema-Zikusoka consulted with a doctor friend, who told her about the human disease scabies, common at the time among low-income communities in rural Uganda.

After chimpanzees and bonobos, gorillas are our closest genetic relatives, sharing around 98.4% of their DNA with humans. This genetic similarity also makes gorillas vulnerable to many of the same diseases as humans.

Kalema-Zikusoka and the team tracked down the afflicted gorilla family: it was Kacupira’s group, the gentle giant she had met on her first trek. Many of the apes were extremely unwell, including a baby gorilla that, despite medical interventions, died.

“This made me realize that you couldn’t protect the gorillas without improving the health of their human neighbors,” she says.

Bwindi is located in one of Uganda’s most densely populated rural regions, leaving limited space for a buffer zone. Instead, farmland and villages are pressed up against its borders. The park is also relatively small — at just 321 square kilometers (123 square miles), it is just 2% of the size of the 14,700-square-kilometer (5,600-square-mile) Serengeti in Tanzania — which puts further pressure on its borders and resources and increases the likelihood of human-gorilla interactions.

To help remedy the situation Kalema-Zikusoka founded Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) in 2003, a non-profit that has worked with around 10,000 households around the national park to improve the community’s health and well-being.

Local farmers are trained to safely herd gorillas back to the forest when they venture onto community land, and a network of village health teams educates families on ways to improve hygiene and reduce the spread of disease.

And now that the gorilla population is growing, so is tourism in the area: 27 gorilla families are now habituated to people, and the number of “gorilla tourists” in Uganda has risen from around 1,300 in 1993 to almost 39,000 in 2023.

It’s improved the well-being of villagers living near the park, says Joshua Masereka, the community conservation warden at Uganda Wildlife Authority. “When tourists come to this place, there’s more money and therefore more benefits, more jobs, more opportunities, more developments,” he says, adding that the park allocates 20% of its revenue to community projects, such as building schools and roads.

CTPH is one of the wildlife authority’s “prime partners” and has been pivotal to the conservation work at the park, says Masereka. “Gladys, I think she’s born with conservation in her blood. If you go through the life of her family, how she was brought up, she was brought up in that life of being a conservationist and I think she’ll die a conservationist.”

Kalema-Zikusoka’s dedication has inspired others in the community into action. Born and raised around Bwindi, Alex Ngabirano worked for CTPH for 15 years, before starting his own non-profit organization, Mubare Biodiversity, which focuses on reforming poachers around the park. Gorillas are rarely poached intentionally, but subsistence hunters looking to put food on the table sometimes go after pigs or antelope in the forest, and accidentally snare or spear gorillas in the process.

By educating the local community on the benefits of gorilla tourism, Ngabirano and his team have convinced more than 300 former poachers to give up their tools, and are now retraining them as rangers, guides, and farmers.

“Dr. Gladys has done amazing work in Bwindi community. She’s the first person to introduce the one health approach in this area,” says Ngabirano. “The (community) started understanding that in the future, their children will become rangers and guides, all those jobs associated with conservation and tourism activities.”

Kalema-Zikusoka’s conservation efforts have been recognized internationally, too: she is a National Geographic explorer, and her many accolades include the Whitley Gold Award in 2009, the Leopold Award in 2020, and the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize in 2022.

And her hard work continues to show in the expanding gorilla population: in the last two months alone, three baby gorillas were born in the forest.

“I always get very excited when I hear that a baby mountain gorilla has been born,” says Kalema-Zokusoka. “It gives me hope that the numbers are continuing to grow. It means that we’re bringing the gorillas back from the brink of extinction.”

Deterrence is necessary in Asia in the face of “threats from the Communist Chinese,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Manila on Friday as he opened his first visit to Asia in his role under a cloud of scrutiny for discussing American war plans on Signal.

The US has an “ironclad commitment” to the US-Philippines alliance, Hegseth said in opening remarks ahead of a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

“Friends need to stand shoulder to shoulder to deter conflict and ensure there’s free navigation whether you call it the South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea,” Hegseth said, referring to the strategic, resource-rich waterway that China claims most of.

The defense chief visit comes as the Trump administration has signaled their aim to prioritize “deterring war with China.” Hegseth warned US allies in Europe earlier this year that Washington can no longer be primarily focused on security on that continent as it looks to its “peer competitor” in Asia and the US southern border.

The Philippines has been on the front lines of China’s increasingly aggressive posture in Asia. Beijing seeks to assert its claim over the bulk of the South China Sea, despite an international ruling denying its sovereignty over the waterway.

Hegseth will also visit US ally Japan during his tour, which comes as he seeks to tamp down controversy around his decision to share information about US military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on the commercial messaging app Signal.

Australians will go to the polls on May 3 for general elections with high costs of living and a shortage of housing likely weighing against the government as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party seeks a second three-year term.

Albanese drove to Governor-General Sam Mostyn’s official residence on Friday to trigger the election and announced the date later at a news conference at Parliament House.

“Over the last few years, the world has thrown a lot at Australia. In uncertain times, we cannot decide the challenges that we will face, but we can determine how we respond,” Albanese said.

“Our government has chosen to face global challenges the Australian way: helping people under cost-of-living while building for the future,” he added.

What’s the expected result?

Many expect opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative coalition to pick up seats in the House of Representatives.

An Australian government has not been ousted after a single term since 1931, when the nation was grappling with the Great Depression. But Australian governments almost always lose ground in their second election and Labor holds only 77 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives, where governments need a majority. Redistributions mean there will be only 150 seats after the next election.

One likely outcome is a minority government supported by independent or minor party legislators.

The 2022 election brought a record 19 lawmakers who were not aligned to either the government or opposition into the Parliament.

Unaligned lawmakers could be crucial to whether Labor or Dutton’s conservative Liberal Party forms Australia’s first minority election since the 2010 election.

What are the issues?

Cost of living pressures have increased across Australia since Albanese came to power, with 12 interest rate hikes since the last election. However, Australia’s central bank reduced the benchmark cash rate by a quarter percentage point to 4.1%, in February in a sign that the worst of the inflationary pressures has passed.

Albanese promised to reduce a housing shortage by building 1.2 million homes over five years, but the 2023 pledge has got off to a slow start.

Dutton has promised to reduce competition for housing by reducing immigration. He would also allow Australians to spend savings in their compulsory workplace pension funds on down payments to buy new homes.

Both parties have pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. But the government would rely on renewable energy sources including solar panels and wind turbines to replace coal and gas, while the opposition would build seven state-funded nuclear power plants.

The opposition also advocates adding new gas-fired power generation to maintain electricity supply until nuclear power arrives.