GERMANY: The co-leaders of the Greens, one of three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s troubled coalition government, are to step down after the latest in a string of disappointing election results.

Under Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang, support for the Greens declined sharply in June’s European Parliament election. Voters ejected them from two state parliaments in eastern Germany this month, most recently in Brandenburg on Sunday.

PHILIPPINES: United States and Filipino security officials agreed today to keep a US mid-range missile system in the north of the country indefinitely to boost deterrence, despite the move alarming China. 

The Typhon missile system includes the Tomahawk land attack missile, which can travel over 1,000 miles and thus reach China. 

INDIA: A strike by more than 1,000 workers at a Samsung India Electronics plant has entered its third week, with an impasse over union demands for recognition and higher pay, a union spokesman said today.

The strike by members of the Samsung India Electronics workers’ union in the plant near Chennai started on September 9, with staff demanding a 25-30 per cent pay rise.

IRAN: The death toll from an explosion at a coalmine in the country’s east rose to 50 today after one of the workers injured in the blast last Saturday died in hospital, state television reported.

A methane gas leak sparked the explosion at the mine in Tabas, about 335 miles south-east of the capital Tehran.