Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his decision earlier this year to invoke emergency powers to quell protests against the country's COVID-19 public health restrictions while testifying before a public inquiry on Friday.
Driving the news: The protests had began in Ottawa as opposition to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for truckers, but since expanded to include general opposition to public health restrictions and spread to other provinces.
Elon Musk announced Thursday a "general amnesty" for suspended Twitter accounts from next week, "provided that they have not broken the law" or engaged in "egregious spam."
Why it matters: Online monitoring groups have reported a rise in racism, anti-Semitism and other hate speech on Twitter since free speech advocate Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company last month, though the billionaire said Thursday it has declined.
More than 15,000 people have gone missing in Ukraine since Russian forces launched their invasion, an official in the Kyiv office of the Hague-based International Commission on Missing Persons said Thursday.
The big picture: Matthew Holliday, the ICMP's program director for Europe, told Reuters the numbers were conservative and it wasn't clear how many of those missing had been "forcibly transferred," detained in Russia, separated from their families or had "died and been buried in makeshift graves."
China has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, as Beijing authorities lock down more areas this week — including parts of the central city Zhengzhou, where Apple's main iPhone factory is located.
The latest: China hit a new daily record for a second straight day on Friday as authorities moved to enforce restrictions in an attempt to control outbreaks across the country, per Reuters.
The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday voted to create "a new fact-finding mission to investigate" recent violence against protesters in Iran.
The big picture: The Iranian government has cracked down aggressively on protests that began in September in response to the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini while in custody. More than 300 people have been killed in the demonstrations, including dozens of children, according to the U.N.
President Biden said Thursday that negotiations between the U.S. and its allies over imposing a price cap on Russian oil are ongoing and confirmed that he had spoken to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about the issue.
What they're saying: "It's in play," Biden told reporters while visiting a fire station in Nantucket,Massachusetts, per a White House pool report.
Ukraine on Thursday marked exactly nine months since the start of Russia's brutal invasion, as parts of the country continued to recover from a barrage of Russian missile strikes the day before.
Driving the news: Russian strikes on Wednesday targeted critical infrastructure facilities across Ukraine, causing massive blackouts throughout the country and even in neighboring Moldova.
Global warming is leading to more extreme weather in Australia, like the ongoing flooding in the southeast — and these extremes are happening at an increased pace across the country, per a new climate report.
Threat level: Australia is facing more extreme heat events, intense heavy rainfall, longer fire seasons and sea level rise, according to the biennial State of the Climate Report by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, published Wednesday.
Brazil's electoral court fined parties in outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro's government Wednesday after they challenged his presidential election loss to leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last month.
Details: Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who heads the electoral court, rejected the challenge and issued a fine totaling 22.9 million reais ($4.27 million) for "bad faith litigation" and ruled government funds for the Liberal Party coalition must be suspended until the penalty is paid, per Reuters.
Pope Francis compared Russia's invasion of Ukraine to a brutal Stalin-era famine on Wednesday in one of his sharpest condemnations yet, the New York Times reports.
Driving the news: During his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, the pope asked people to commemorate "the terrible Holodomor genocide, the extermination by hunger of 1932-33 artificially caused by Stalin" alongside Ukrainians on Saturday.
