- Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe shattered the two-hour marathon barrier at the London Marathon on April 26, finishing in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds, the first person ever to accomplish this feat in an official competitive race. He broke the previous world record of 2:00:35, set by the late Kelvin Kiptum in Chicago in 2023, by 65 seconds. Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha also dipped under two hours with a time of 1:59:41 in second place, while Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo took third in 2:00:28, meaning the top three all finished under the old world record. https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/4/26/kenyas-sawe-shatters-two-hour-marathon-barrier
- Elderly Cubans are increasingly relying on meals provided by churches and state institutions as the island’s economic crisis deepens. At the Church of the Holy Spirit in Old Havana, nearly 50 retirees gather three times a week for a modest lunch. Most pensioners receive less than $10 a month and face cuts to subsidized goods. The crisis has worsened dramatically since early 2026 following an oil embargo imposed by President Trump, compounding decades of economic hardship. Cuba’s population aged 60 and older now makes up nearly 26% of the country, while mass emigration of younger people has shrunk the island’s population by about 1.5 million in five years. https://apnews.com/article/cuba-seniors-crisis-us-oil-embargo-e0940ba0d913d66e165d3ad8e2d476f4
- Across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, families are reverting to charcoal and firewood for cooking as the Iran war has driven up the cost and reduced the availability of liquefied petroleum gas. Governments had spent years promoting LPG to improve health and reduce deforestation, but those gains are now unraveling. In Nairobi’s informal settlements, charcoal demand is climbing. The shift is increasing pressure on forests and wildlife habitats, raising the risk of poaching and human-wildlife conflict, while falling tourism revenue and high fuel costs are undermining conservation field operations. https://apnews.com/article/iran-oil-africa-wildlife-conservation-lpg-b7fbb4297f435974588d978ba8465ab9
- Approximately 20,000 seafarers on roughly 2,000 vessels have been stranded in the Persian Gulf for about eight weeks, unable to cross the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed since the US-Israeli war on Iran began February 28. Iran shut the strait to most international shipping after the strikes, and the US imposed its own counter-blockade of Iranian ports on April 13, creating a “dual blockade.” The disruption has cut around 20% of global oil and gas supply and driven up commodity prices worldwide. https://apnews.com/article/stranded-ships-iran-war-hormuz-b1b22b26312c7ea2b70b3f542f235e77
- North Korea opened a memorial museum in Pyongyang on Sunday for its soldiers killed fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine in the Kursk region. Leader Kim Jong Un attended the ceremony together with visiting Russian officials including State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and Defense Minister Andrei Beloussov. https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-russia-ukraine-memorial-museum-7c010fe1ded78fc45167c4fbab17ec92
- Japan’s “spring bear” hunting season is now fully underway, targeting bears that are still in hibernation or just emerging, as part of government efforts to reduce an estimated population of 54,000 bears that has driven record human-bear conflicts. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/spring-bear-hunting-fully-under-way-in-japan-amid-earlier-than-usual-sightings
- Japan’s Forestry Agency confirmed abundant beech tree flowering across 145 monitoring sites in five Tohoku prefectures, signaling that the autumn nut harvest is on track to be far better than 2025’s extremely poor crop. Beech nuts are the primary autumn food source for Japanese black bears, and poor mast years have driven bears into residential areas in search of calories, leading to record attacks. Forestry officials will return in autumn to weigh actual nut production against the spring flowering data. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260424/p2a/00m/0na/006000c
- Sudan’s Democratic Block alliance, which includes political groups such as the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, has been meeting in Khartoum to form committees aimed at engaging political forces on creating a transitional legislative council. The alliance has described this as a pivotal step toward completing transitional structures and consolidating a civilian democratic transition, amid the ongoing civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces that began in April 2023. https://sudantribune.com/article/313192
- French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Andorra on April 27 for a two-day official visit in his capacity as one of Andorra’s co-princes. A key item on his agenda is the decriminalization of abortion. Andorra remains one of only two European states, alongside the Vatican, where voluntary pregnancy termination is entirely banned. Macron held institutional talks with Head of Government Xavier Espot on the issue, along with discussions on housing shortages and the EU association agreement. The Andorran government aims to submit a decriminalization bill before summer, though the procedure would not be legalized domestically. https://www.prensa-latina.cu/2026/04/27/macron-viajara-a-andorra-con-la-legalizacion-del-aborto-en-la-agenda/
- One in six road traffic fatalities in Germany in 2025 involved a cyclist, according to preliminary figures from the Federal Statistical Office. Cyclist deaths rose roughly 4% compared to the prior year, continuing a troubling long-term trend. https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/strassenverkehr-fahrradfahrer-100.html
- Suspected Somali pirates hijacked the fuel tanker Honour 25 off the northeastern coast of Somalia on April 22. Six armed men from the Bandarbeyla district seized the Palau-registered vessel, which was carrying 18,500 barrels of oil and 17 crew members of Pakistani, Indonesian, Indian, Sri Lankan, and Myanmar nationality, as it traveled from Berbera to Mogadishu. The tanker was moved to an anchorage between the towns of Xaafun and Bander Beyla, where additional armed men boarded. The hijacking comes amid tripling fuel prices in Mogadishu since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7871n27nlo
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted two draft laws to the Verkhovna Rada on April 27 to extend martial law and general mobilization for another 90 days, from May 4 until August 2, 2026. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/04/27/8031977/
- One of two large wildfires in southeastern Georgia, the Highway 82 Fire in Brantley County, has exceeded 31 square miles and was only 7% contained as of Sunday morning. The fire has been burning since April 20 and had destroyed at least 87 homes by Saturday, with the county manager warning that it had doubled in size overnight and that evacuation notices could be issued. https://apnews.com/article/georgia-florida-wildfires-drought-730bee62fb42b0c5eea77c08888025c3
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