A powerful cyclone, christened 'Chido' wreaked havoc in south-east Africa, with authorities confirming that 45 people were killed in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi. French officials said the number of deaths on the Mayotte archipelago remained unclear, having previously expressed fears that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed in slums flattened by the storm. Till Thursday morning (Dec. 19), 22 deaths and 1,500 injuries, 200 of them critical, have been confirmed.

The cyclone, which meteorologists said was intensified by climate breakdown, struck Mayotte with winds of up to 140mph (225km/h) on Saturday (Dec. 14). It then barrelled across northern Mozambique, where there is an Islamist insurgency, and Malawi. Nearly 500 people were injured in Mozambique, according to the National Institute of Risk and Disaster Management, and 24,000 homes were destroyed. In Mayotte, a French overseas region, the water system was "working at 50%" but there was a risk of "poor quality", France's minister for overseas matters said.

A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday (Dec. 17) by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine's security service leveled criminal charges against him. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack. Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office. Kirillov's assistant also died in the attack. Kirillov, 54, was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow's war in Ukraine.

On Monday, Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons. An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a "war criminal and an entirely legitimate target."

Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the German parliament, putting the European Union's most populous member and biggest economy on course to hold an early election in February. Scholz won the support of 207 lawmakers in the 733-seat lower house, or Bundestag, while 394 voted against him and 116 abstained. That left him far short of the majority of 367 needed to win. Scholz leads a minority government after his unpopular and notoriously rancorous three-party coalition collapsed on Nov. 6, when he fired his finance minister in a dispute over how to revitalize Germany's stagnant economy.

Leaders of several major parties then agreed that a parliamentary election should be held on Feb. 23, seven months earlier than originally planned. The confidence vote was needed because post-World War II Germany's constitution doesn't allow the Bundestag to dissolve itself. Now President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has to decide whether to dissolve parliament and call an election.

In his first overseas trip since taking office, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited India this week, meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a far-ranging joint statement, the two leaders agreed to step up economic, energy, and defense cooperation. Perhaps most importantly, Dissanayake assured Modi that Sri Lankan territory won't be used "in any way that is detrimental" to India's interests, a possible reference to Indian concerns about Chinese research vessels docking in Sri Lanka and conducting surveillance.

Both rivals India and China have vied for influence in the island country that sits strategically along shipping routes in the Indian Ocean. Before Sri Lanka's economy collapsed in 2022, Beijing poured in billions of dollars to build infrastructure projects that included a port which India feared could affect its security. However, New Delhi and Colombo reset ties as India helped the country tide over its economic woes by extending aid worth $ 4 billion as the cash-strapped country struggled to buy food, fuel and medicines.