LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers took to picket lines in multiple states on Wednesday, launching a massive strike that the company warned could cause delays at its hospitals and clinics that serve nearly 13 million Americans.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington.

TORONTO/AMRITSAR, India, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Canadian universities are reassuring Indian students of their safety and offering resources to deal with the uncertainty triggered by the diplomatic crisis between the two countries as they seek to limit the fallout on a booming business.

As Canadian colleges prepare to kick off another semester, some students are considering delaying their courses, while others are assessing whether higher education could become a collateral damage of the current crisis.

MADRID, Oct 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A wildfire raging on Spain’s holiday island of Tenerife amid unseasonably hot temperatures forced the evacuation on Wednesday of around 3,000 people from their homes, local officials said.

Firefighters backed by six water-dropping helicopters were battling the blaze which broke out on Wednesday afternoon in an area of steep ravines in the northeast of the island that was badly ravaged by a huge wildfire in August, the regional government of Tenerife said.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said it began releasing a second batch of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea on Thursday after the first round of discharges ended smoothly.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said workers activated a pump to dilute the treated water with large amounts of seawater, slowly sending the mixture into the ocean through an underground tunnel.

MOSCOW, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the West had lost touch with reality over the Ukraine war and warned that if its leaders had forgotten how to compromise then the world would have to see where such arrogance led.

Putin accused the West of fomenting the conflict in Ukraine, which he cast as part of a much larger struggle between Russia and an arrogant West which he said had lost a sense of reality.

SEOUL, Oct 5 (Reuters) - North Korea has halted the nuclear reactor at its main atomic complex, probably to extract plutonium that could be used for weapons by reprocessing spent fuel rods, a South Korean news report said on Thursday, citing a government source.

The operation of the 5 megawatt nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex has been suspended since late September, according to intelligence assessment by U.S. and South Korean authorities, the report said.

04 October 2023; MEMO: Spain, Portugal and Morocco joined to be the only bidder to host the 2030 World Cup as the three nations will host matches, FIFA confirmed Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

TRIPOLI, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Libya's newly approved presidential and national assembly election laws were referred to the High National Elections Commission, said the speaker of Libyan parliament on Wednesday.

The laws were issued on Wednesday officially by Libyan parliament, the House of Representatives, based on the 13th Constitutional Amendment and the outcomes of the 6+6 committee, said a statement on its official website.