GLOBAL NEWS IN BRIEF
>>>South Korea’s ex-president Park Geun-hye left the hospital on Thursday, three months after she was released from prison following a pardon for her role in one of the country’s biggest corruption cases
>>>North Korea fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday, Tokyo and Seoul said as they voiced outrage at Pyongyang’s most powerful launch since 2017
>>>Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state and one of the most influential stateswomen of her generation, died Wednesday of cancer at age 84, her family announced.
>>>President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday Russia will only accept payments in rubles for gas deliveries to “unfriendly countries”, which include all EU members after Moscow was hit by unprecedented sanctions over Ukraine.
>>>A magnitude 6.7 earthquake that struck off the coast of Taiwan early Wednesday rattled buildings and roused people from their sleep, leaving one injured and causing a half-constructed bridge in the island’s east to collapse.
>>>President Joe Biden leaves Wednesday for Europe on a mission to bolster Western unity, and ramp up unprecedented sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine and attempting to upset the post-Cold War balance of power.
>>>US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson defended her record of sentencing in child pornography cases and advocacy for terror suspects as she was grilled Tuesday in her bid to be the first Black woman on the country’s highest judicial bench.
>>>Six children died and over a dozen were injured on Tuesday after their school bus rolled down a cliff in northeastern Colombia, a regional official said.
>>>A leading exiled Belarusian opposition figure on Wednesday urged the West to strengthen sanctions against President Alexander Lukashenko and his regime for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
>>>Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Japan’s parliament Wednesday that the United Nations had failed over the conflict in his country and reforms were needed, calling for more pressure on Russia
>>>A large tornado has destroyed multiple homes and claimed at least one life as it ripped through the US city of New Orleans and its suburbs, local authorities said.
>>>WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his fiancee Stella Moris are to marry on Wednesday, at the high-security London prison where he is being held during his extradition case.
