Reuters By Katy Watson BBC News, Quito, Ecuador The assassination of Fernando Villavicencio upended the final week of campaigning in Ecuador. All eight candidates talked about the need for peace and security – and after an often bloody campaign, that was a message that Ecuadoreans very much wanted to hear. After Mr Villavicencio’s death, a…

Reuters By Nicholas Yong BBC News, Singapore Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi denied approving two controversial bills which further enhance the military’s powers. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Sunday, he said he returned the bills unsigned but his staff “undermined my will”. The two laws make it an offence to reveal…

By Paul Adams Diplomatic correspondent Saudi border guards are accused of the mass killing of migrants along the Yemeni border in a new report by Human Rights Watch. The report says hundreds of people, many of them Ethiopians who cross war-torn Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia, have been shot dead. Migrants have told the BBC…

Benzilla_clicks/3news.com Ghanaian TV presenter and journalist Paa Kwesi Asare has won the 2023 BBC News Komla Dumor Award. The 36-year-old is the eighth recipient of the award and the first to come from Ghana, like the late Komla Dumor. Asare is currently the head of business news at Ghana’s private TV3 channel, where he has…

STR/AFP By Peter Hoskins Business reporter China’s central bank has cut its key interest rates for the second time in three months as the world’s second-largest economy struggles to recover from the impact of the pandemic. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) lowered its one-year loan prime rate to 3.45% from 3.55%. The country’s post-Covid…

Icon Sportswire via Getty Images By Jaroslav Lukiv BBC News Donald Trump has confirmed that he will not take part in Republican presidential debates with his rivals in the race for the White House. The ex-president said one latest poll showed he had “legendary” numbers ahead of other hopefuls to be the party’s nominee for…

Despite London being a global food capital, many will be surprised to learn that eels have been a locally sourced component of its table for hundreds of years. In the 1740s, pleasure boaters would jauntily sail from central London down the River Thames to an islet once known as Twickenham Ait in Richmond, mooring at…

Cheshire Police Nurse Lucy Letby is due to be sentenced later after being found guilty of murdering seven babies, making her the UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern times. The 33-year-old was also convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital. The trial lasted for more than…

By Sanchia Berg BBC News The family of a black man murdered in 1959 is demanding access to the police file on his unsolved killing. Kelso Cochrane was stabbed to death on a west London street, in what’s believed to have been a racist attack. Nobody was ever charged for the crime. The Metropolitan Police…

Ahead of his new epic, with Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon, Scott has caused anger with his comments about his lead character, comparing him to Hitler and Stalin. What’s the truth of the matter, asks Neil Armstrong. It was the opening of his campaign, and the British veteran unleashed a salvo of shots at the French…