Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed that a devastating Russian aerial assault on Ternopil in western Ukraine had resulted in the deaths of at least 26 people and the injuries of dozens more.
At the time of the Russian attack on Ternopil on Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, announced on Thursday that 22 people were still missing. In order to force emergency power cuts in the icy weather, Russia launched 476 drones and 48 missiles across Ukraine, striking vital infrastructure for energy and transportation.
The attack destroyed a residential building’s upper floors in Ternopil. As firefighters battled the blaze, smoke emitted from the structure as concerned residents gathered below, waiting for confirmation about missing loved ones.
Klymenko reported on Telegram that emergency personnel searched the structure’s interior throughout the night. There is still a lot to do. Finding those who might still be hidden beneath the rubble is the main goal, he wrote.
Not a single apartment was left standing in the building where two entrances were completely destroyed. The building was completely engulfed in a wave by the flames that had just erupted. People tried to jump out of windows out of fear.
Three children were among those killed, according to authorities.
Oksana Kobel’s son, who had been staying in a ninth-floor apartment during the strike, had remained hopeful. I heard the explosions as I left for work. I called him and said, “Bohdan, go to the shelter, and get dressed.” She recalled that he said, “Mum, I’m already up, everything will work out.”
Poland, a NATO member with a border with western Ukraine, temporarily closed the southeast’s airports in Rzeszow and Lublin and deployed aircraft to protect its airspace.
Following his European diplomatic mission, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Turkiye to resume peace talks with Russia.
In seven of the country’s seven regions, the attack caused nationwide restrictions on power consumption.
Russia, which denies intentionally attacking people, claimed that Ukrainian forces fired four ATACMS missiles at Voronezh in southern Russia as a response to “terrorist attacks” on Russian territory.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva helped to inaugurate a new megafactory on the site of a former Ford car manufacturing plant one month before the UN climate summit.
The new plant, in Brazil’s Camacari, Bahia, is one of many being built around the world by China’s BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars.
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BYD’s presence is also being felt at the ongoing COP30 climate summit in Brazil’s Belem, where it is a cosponsor alongside GWM, another Chinese electric carmaker.
The sponsorship at the UN’s top climate meeting, where China’s official delegation of 789 people is second only to Brazil’s 3, 805 people, is just one of many ways that China’s investments in green technology are being felt.
It contrasts sharply with the United States, where no official delegation has been sent by the federal government. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has accused US President Donald Trump of “handing the future to China” and leaving states like California to pick up the slack, in a speech at the summit.
“China is here,” he declared. United States of America is the only nation that is not present, Newsom claimed. Trump has called concerns over climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”.
However, the polarizing effects China and the US are having on addressing the climate crisis are being felt at the UN Climate Change Conference COP30.
Chinese electric vehicles have been much more expensive than their manufacturers’ prices due to trade barriers in the US and neighboring Canada.
These tariffs are a legacy of former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and place North America as an outlier at a time when Chinese EVs otherwise dominate the global market.
How much of the EV market is China?
Chinese EVs have “really upended the car market” in recent years, according to Joel Jaeger, a senior research associate with the World Resources Institute.
China has gone “from basically not a major player five years ago” to becoming “the number one exporter of cars globally in terms of the units”, says Jaeger.
China produced 12.4 million electric cars in 2024, or more than 70% of the 17.3 million electric cars produced globally last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
About 1.4 million of these cars were exported by China, accounting for 40% of global exports, while the majority of the remaining Chinese-made vehicles were domestically sold.
This dominance has been built on the back of “subsidies that China’s put in place to develop its industry, which I think is a very strategic thing that China has done, both for its own economic growth as well as decarbonisation”, Jaeger said.
Chinese electric vehicles are still comparatively uncommon on American or Canadian streets.
Why are Chinese electric vehicles less affordable in the US and Canada?
According to Jaeger, “prohibitive” tariffs mean that Chinese EVs are almost impossible to buy in the US and Canada.
He continued, “Over the past year, the US and Canada both implemented essentially total prohibitive tariffs on EVs over 100% in both places.”
Notably, Trump has vowed to fight it and “drill, baby, drill” for oil while Democrats’ Biden, a Democrat, who has advocated renewable energy, introduced the steep import taxes on Chinese EVs in the US.
A month after the US introduced 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs in September 2024, Canada brought in identical tariffs of its own.
This implies that a vehicle that a Chinese EV manufacturer might be selling for $30, 000 in the US or Canada actually costs at least $60,000. Even the less expensive Chinese models can’t compete with the more expensive US electric models, which typically cost about $55,000.
These tariffs, along with other US policies, have meant that Chinese manufacturers have yet to set up shop in the US.
According to Addisu Lashitew, an associate professor of business at McMaster University in Canada, the steep tariffs conflict with targets for fully electric cars by 2035, and are also complicated because of Canada’s close trading ties to the US.
The issue is that we are currently having a very complicated trade conversation with the US, Lashitew said. “And two, our supply chain has also]been] very much integrated. Here are primarily Canadian companies’ suppliers, while many American companies are present.
However, Jaeger contends that North America is missing out on importing new Chinese technology even though it is nearly impossible to purchase one of these cars in the US.
“The US, for example, imports a lot of batteries from China. In fact, China imports lithium-ion batteries from China second only to Germany in the world. They are being used in US-made electric vehicles, he said.
US manufacturers are also making bigger cars, including fully electric pick-up trucks]File: Charles Krupa/AP Photo]
Where can I find affordable Chinese electric vehicles?
Many other nations have been more welcoming of China’s EV market, according to Jaeger, than the US and Canada.
“You see different reactions from different countries, depending on their relationship with China, but mostly depending upon their domestic auto manufacturing presence”, he said.
According to Lashitew, Chinese exporters, including BYD and some smaller ones, are “targeting many emerging and developing nations.”
“Ironically, we’re in a situation where, at least in the transportation sector, the energy transition is moving much more quickly than it has in North America.
Chinese electric cars have also continued to sell well in many European countries, says Jaeger, despite those countries also imposing some tariffs, though lower than the US and Canada, “for what they see as unfair competitive practices in China”.
Despite having factories in Brazil, Hungary, India, and Japan, BYD still maintains its strongest presence in China, where it was founded in Shenzhen in 1995. Chinese consumers made up the majority of the 4.27 million electric vehicles BYD sold in 2024. BYD also has a manufacturing presence in Lancaster, California, where it builds electric buses and batteries, but not cars.
The government’s incentives for local businesses in China have increased, in part because they saw electric cars as a part of their plan to reduce air pollution in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
The government’s strategy has had positive effects on Chinese customers, including with new technology. For example, a new battery, which BYD announced in March with the promise of charging for 400km (about 250 miles) of travel in just five minutes, is first being made available for preorder to customers in China only.
How much do electric vehicles cost?
They cost more than gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles in the past. But according to the IEA, the cost of owning an electric car over the vehicle’s entire lifetime is now less than fossil fuel-powered cars, due to the reduced costs of fuel and maintenance.
However, buying an electric vehicle is still frequently more expensive.
China’s manufacturer subsidies are helpful in that area. The IEA has found that prices for electric cars in China are similar to petrol and diesel cars, with half of all electric cars being sold for less than $30, 000 and a wide range of lower-priced models available.
In contrast, the IEA claims that “the range]of available EVs] was skewed towards higher-end models with higher prices” in the US and Europe.
Under Biden, the US attempted to boost its domestic electric vehicle industry while reducing China’s dependence on the latter.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced incentives for US manufacturers that did not use any Chinese parts. Despite being largely overturned by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which became law in July, the IRA also introduced subsidies for customers who purchased EVs.
However, despite the incentives imposed by Biden, only one in ten cars sold in the US in 2024 was electric, compared to more than half of all new cars sold in China in the same year.
Electric buses charge in Cape Town, South Africa]File: AP Photo]
not just automobiles
In many places around the world, people are increasingly turning to electric bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, buses, and even trains, despite the headlines for sustainable transportation.
Even in the US, says Jaeger, there has been a significant growth in the number of electric scooters and two-wheelers imported from China.
In the 12 months leading up to September 2025, the US imported $ 1.5 billion worth of electric two-wheelers from China, an increase of $ 275 million, or more than 20%, from the previous year, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). According to experts, this is because scooters are less expensive than cars and because US taxes on Chinese electric scooters are also lower than those on electric vehicles.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the government has said it will ban petrol-powered motorbikes in the centre of its capital, Hanoi, from July next year, as part of a plan to tackle local air pollution.
In Europe, including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, the IEA estimates that about 40% of bus sales are now electric.
In Central and South America, electric bus sales have increased as well. In Mexico, for example, “close to 18 percent of all bus sales were electric in 2024, up from just above 1 percent in 2023”, according to the IEA.
The US is still struggling in this area, too. The leading electric bus manufacturer went bankrupt, and a second company stopped making electric buses in the US market after suffering significant financial losses, according to the IEA, in 2024.
Vietnam is planning to phase out petrol motorcycles]File: Thanh Hue/Getty Images]
In a show of force ahead of the anticipated demonstrations surrounding the Group of 20 world leaders summit in Johannesburg this weekend, South African police and army units have organized a parade featuring helicopters and motorcycle riders.
The army was put on standby under the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure, a unified command that coordinates the nation’s police, military, and intelligence agencies for high-profile events, on Wednesday as authorities increased security by adding 3, 500 police officers.
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Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili, the deputy national commissioner for policing, informed reporters on Tuesday that the government was anticipating protests in Johannesburg and other significant cities.
She said, “We will permit that right to protest to be exercised.” However, within the law’s proper guidelines and restrictions.
Near the summit venue, an exhibition center next to South Africa’s largest football stadium, police said they have designated specific locations for protesters to gather near.
Leaders and top diplomats from more than 40 nations as well as from international organizations like the UN are expected to attend the two-day summit, which will take place on Saturday. However, America is boycotting.
Anti-capitalists, climate activists, women’s rights activists, anti-immigrant organizations, and other groups are expected to demonstrate their own issues with poverty and inequality.
[Esa Alexander/Reuters] A Greenpeace activist holds a banner in Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 19, 2025.
By putting up billboards in Johannesburg that read “Welcome to the most RACE-REGULATED country in the world,” a trade union representing members of South Africa’s Afrikaner white minority has already stoked controversy.
The Afrikaner trade union, Solidarity, threatened legal action after one of the boards was removed by city authorities.
The billboards reference South Africa’s affirmative action laws, which promote opportunities for Black people and have become a result of US-South Africa’s diplomatic conflict.
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, will not be present at the G20 summit as a boycott because of his widely disproven claims that the country’s Black-led government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies and violently oppressing its Africann minority.
Trump’s claims have been largely disproven as being unsupported, but the US government’s boycott threatens to derail Africa’s first G20 summit.
Washington claimed its decision to boycott the G20 summit had lost its influence, so South Africa rejected a US request on Wednesday to have no leaders’ declaration issued following the G20 summit this weekend.
Government officials confirmed rumors that Washington would not participate in the summit had been reiterated by the US embassy over the weekend.
“For the wealthy”
On Friday, the summit’s eve, the advocacy group Women for Change wants a national shutdown. In protest of South Africa’s extremely high rates of femicide and violence against women, it is asking women to boycott their jobs on the day.
The G20 cannot talk of growth and progress, according to Women for Change, until South Africa stops burying women every 2.5 hours.
The leader of a South African anti-immigration group, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, said the country’s leader will launch a protest against the lack of employment and poverty there.
In a move that has already sparked a diametrically opposed political outlook for the country, US President Donald Trump will meet with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House.
Late on Wednesday, Trump posted a false statement on his social media platform Truth Social stating that Mamdani would travel to the Oval Office on Friday. He also falsely identified Mamdani as a communist and put his middle name, Kwame, in quotation marks.
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“Further details to follow” the president enlarging.
The president slammed Mamdani as a “communist,” mispronouncing his name, threatened to cut off federal funding to New York if he won, and capped off the campaign with his historic victory on November 4 as the city’s first Muslim mayor.
In the final hours before the election, Trump even endorsed Democratic Rep. Andrew Cuomo over Republican Rep. Curtis Sliwa, boasting to his supporters that Mamdani was a “FAILURE.”
Mamdani, for his part, has frequently compared the Trump administration to authoritarianism and portrayed his own objectives as mayor in stark contrast to the president’s lifelong pursuit of wealth and power.
In his victory speech, Mamdani made a promise to the same city that gave rise to Donald Trump, noting his New York roots. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by destroying the very conditions that gave him the most power, “And there is only one way to do that.”
Trump has nevertheless indicated that he is willing to defrost relations following the election earlier this month, which also saw sweeping victories for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia. The president rebuffed his threat of funding in a speech to the American Business Forum in Florida as he criticized communism.
“We’ll help him,” the phrase means “we’ll help him.” New York should have success, we want it. He said, “We’ll give him a little help, maybe.”
In the run-up to and after Mamdani won the mayoral election, numerous Republicans and MAGA supporters launched racist and vitriolic attacks on Mamdani.
Mamdani addressed “racist, baseless attacks” from his opponents in an emotional speech days before the election day. Mamdani criticized opponents for bringing “hatred to the forefront” while speaking outside a Bronx mosque, noting that close to one million Muslims live in New York and are affected by their Islamophobia.
Mamdani claimed earlier this week that his team had contacted the White House because he had “made a commitment that showed a willingness to meet with anyone and everyone, as long as it is for the benefit” of New Yorkers.
Kenya – Mary Mwangi, a tall, talkative woman who owns a tailoring business in Thika town in Kiambu County, started knitting as a child. But it was only in 2017, when she was bedridden for 11 months after having cancer treatment, that she picked it up again.
Mwangi was first identified with spine cancer. She chose to knit hats, which she ended up donating to Kenyatta National Hospital’s cancer patients because she was housebound and wanted to have fun.
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Her world was shaken again the following year, in 2018, when she was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer.
“I felt like it was the end of me when the diagnosis came out”, said the 52-year-old mother of three, who recalls being “terrified” at the news.
She turned off her phone and kept her friends and family a distance. The world was so violent when I told my husband that I didn’t want to interact with anyone.
Mwangi had to undergo a mastectomy – a surgical removal of part or all of a breast – and 33 sessions of radiotherapy. She spent four years receiving treatment, losing both of her hair and money in the process.
She lamented that when I took out a 1.3 million Kenyan-shilling (approximately $10, 000) loan to expand my tailoring business, everything [was] thrown away] by treatment.
Added to the physical and financial devastation was the social discrimination.
Although the mastectomy saved her life, her community in central Kenya, which is located 40 kilometers (24. 8 miles) northeast of Nairobi, experienced stigma.
Mwangi, who was declared cancer-free in 2020, was quoted as the “woman whose breasts were cut.” “Losing them affects your dignity”.
She soon realized she wasn’t the only one: While visiting a nearby hospital’s cancer unit, she noticed other women tucked under large scarves and sleeveless clothing. She learned from their conversations that they had also had mastectomies.
Although there are several cancer survivor support groups in Kenya that offer screening and counselling services, some of them for free, experts say the public health system often lacks adequate oncology and follow-up care, with many survivors left to navigate recovery on their own.
Mwangi pondered what helped her through her illness, knitting, in an effort to help others like herself. Then she came up with the idea of knitting knitted breast prostheses made of vibrant cotton yarn to help survivors while earning money.
At a cancer support group she attended while ill, one of the sessions taught the participants to make yarn breast prostheses. Before beginning to practice her craft, Mwangi started there, where she learned the fundamentals and later watched YouTube tutorials.
“Thank you for the knitting,” It was a form of simple therapy for me”, Mwangi said. It “told me not to think about]the cancer.”
A woman has a mammogram to examine her for early breast cancer. [File: Njeri Mwangi/Reuters]
Physical and psychological care
According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women worldwide. More than 6,700 women in Kenya are affected annually by it, according to the nation’s National Cancer Institute.
Many undergo mastectomies and are left searching for prosthetic breasts.
However, according to Mwangi, one silicone prosthetic costs an estimated 22 000 Kenyan shillings ($170), making them unaffordable for many. More than 40% of Kenya’s population, according to the World Bank, lives below the international poverty line of $3 per day.
Mwangi sells each prosthetic she knits for 1 500 Kenyan shillings ($11, 60) for each.
They come in different sizes and colours and are filled with yarn before being placed into specially adapted bras with pockets, which are sold separately for between 1, 000 ($7.74) and 2, 000 Kenyan shillings ($15.49) each.
Mwangi sells about 600 breast prostheses and more than 450 knitted hats for cancer patients each week, selling about 50 pieces a week.
She pays cash for her goods in her shop, but she also donates them in large quantities to charities she has collaborated with, including Children’s Cancer Initiative and Kenyatta National Hospital, and Milele Health.
This has helped her rebuild her business, while also continuing to aid those in need.
Mwangi also makes an effort to support survivors through the support group New Dawn Cancer Warriors, which she leads.
She describes the day a 33-year-old survivor named Jane, who was initially too anxious to speak, joined the group.
When Mwangi spoke to her privately, she learned that her confidence had dropped since having a mastectomy. She encouraged her by teaching her that a woman’s loss does not diminish her. She also donated a knitted prosthesis to support her. She claims that after five months, Jane gradually regained her self-assurance and started contributing to group discussions. Today, Mwangi says her self-esteem and courage have returned.
Knitted prosthetics, according to psychologist Joy Kulet, who sees numerous women who have undergone mastectomies, are both an affordable option and help women who have had mastectomies.
She said that losing a breast is more psychological than just physical.
Hannah Nungari Mugo, a breast cancer survivor, used to be a vegetable seller but now knits to earn money to support her family]Daniel Kipchumba/Egab]
Knitting served as my source of purpose.
The outside of Mwangi’s tailoring shop can be audible as busy sewing machines scream in Thika town.
Inside, finished clothes hang on the wall near two women focused on sewing. They occasionally joke joke joke jokes and laugh heartily as their skilled workers continue to feed fabric into their machines.
Mwangi knits a prosthetic breast as the sewing progresses. When she finishes, she immediately begins stuffing it with wool-like fibre, before moving on to make another piece.
The vibrant knitted breast prostheses are on display on a table next to her.
Mwangi crafts the majority of the breast prostheses she sells herself, but some, especially when she receives large orders, are created by trained women who she employs to assist with the knitting.
Since January, Mwangi says she has taught more than 200 women to knit during informal lessons she holds in her tailoring shop.
According to Mwangi, “knitting has not only saved me, but it has also given me a purpose.”
Hannah Nungari Mugo, a 46-year-old former vegetable trader at Thika market and a survivor of breast cancer, is one of the people she has trained.
Mugo underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy in 2019. Her husband took out a 500, 000 Kenyan shilling ($3, 800) loan to keep them afloat as her body lost weight and hair.
She claimed that all of our savings were consumed by it.
But like Mwangi, the stigma that followed was one of the worst parts of the experience, she says. People in her neighborhood turned away from her activities because they thought she was “fragile.”
She said, “I immediately started getting the basics from Mwangi’s training,” and after a few weeks, I was done. She now makes approximately seven prostheses a week to sell at Mwangi’s store, which earns her an income to support her family.
The Mwangi knitting and support group [Daniel Kipchumba/Egab] is led by Mary Patricia Karobia, a liver transplant survivor.
Sharing stories is “part of healing,” according to the saying.
The workshops aren’t just for breast cancer survivors. Mary Patricia Karobia, 58, who uses the opportunity to share her own story of stigma and survival, is one of the participants who also participated.
She received a successful liver transplant in 2011 after being diagnosed with liver fibrosis. But just like Mwangi and Mugo, discrimination awaited.
She said, “People were whispering that my liver had been removed,” recalling that she was forbidden from participating in women’s events because she was deemed too weak to contribute.
She felt disregarded. But then she came across Mwangi and her space that enabled women to talk about their experiences with others going through something similar, and she was inspired to join.
Karobia reported that she now knits four [prostheses] each week. Making prosthetics gives me joy because I help breast cancer survivors regain their self-esteem, according to the artist.
“The healing journey]from cancer] is unique for each individual. Some people find it easy, while others fall behind, according to psychologist Kulet, adding that Mwangi’s community support groups are necessary.
She said that sharing a person’s story is a part of healing, especially in areas where they can freely share their story without fear of being judged.
Mwangi considers her work to be part of the larger healing process for breast cancer survivors who have undergone mastectomies. She claims that many of the women who have the prostheses have shown improved self-esteem and courage, which is a merit for her.
Due to space constraints, Mwangi’s training workshops can only hold four people at once. And financially, she is limited: she can’t register as a training school due to a lack of funds, the price of yarn also fluctuated a few times this year – from 450 Kenyan shillings ($3.40) to almost double that – forcing her to sometimes raise prices.
She continues to believe.
She stated, “My goal is to train as many cancer survivors as possible in Kenya.” She wants them all to have their own independent businesses one day, so that hopefully, they too can “earn a living through knitting”.
