International news from Thursday, February 26th, 2026

Ukrainian and US officials met in Geneva on Thursday for talks on post-war reconstruction despite a deadlock in peace negotiations with Russia, which pounded infrastructure across Ukraine with drone and missile strikes overnight.

An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the territory's health officials said, and the Israeli military said it killed a rebel who posed a threat to its forces in the south of the enclave.

Pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai's fraud conviction and prison sentence were overturned by a Hong Kong court on Thursday, in a surprise legal decision that comes soon after Lai was jailed for 20 years on a separate national security charge.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to testify behind closed doors on Thursday to a congressional committee investigating the late convicted financier Jeffrey Epstein, though it is not clear how much new information will come to light.

The death toll from the heavy rains in Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais has risen to 46, according to figures released by the state fire department on Wednesday.

A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed in the course of their work last year, two-thirds of them killed by Israel, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Wednesday.

A nearly blind refugee from Myanmar missing since his release from a Buffalo jail into the custody of US Border Patrol has been found dead on a downtown street, city authorities said on Wednesday.

Cuban forces have killed four exiles and wounded six others who sailed aboard a Florida-registered speedboat on Wednesday and opened fire on a patrol, the government said at a time of heightened tensions with the US.