Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

China mounts largest incursion yet near Taiwan, blames U.S. for tensions

China blamed the United States on Monday for increased tensions over Taiwan, as the island fingered Beijing as the “chief culprit” after reporting the largest ever incursion by China’s air force into its air defence zone at 56 aircraft. Chinese-claimed Taiwan has complained for a year or more of repeated missions by China’s air force near the democratically governed island, often in the southwestern part of its air defence zone close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.

Libya parliament agrees to parliamentary election law, spokesperson says

Libya’s eastern-based parliament said on Monday it had agreed a law for a parliamentary election to take place a month after a planned Dec. 24 presidential election. A statement by parliament spokesperson Abdullah Belhaiq said the chamber had agreed each article in the law, which will keep parliament at the same number of members.

Chile police bust crime ring smuggling Haitian children to U.S., Mexico

Chilean police have dismantled a crime ring that helped smuggle hundreds of children of Haitian migrants, sometimes without their parents, from Chile north to Mexico and the United States, Interpol said on Monday. The transnational group orchestrated a complex, cross-border network that smuggled an estimated 1,000 Haitian migrants out of Chile, including 267 Chilean children under the age of six, all born to Haitian migrants, according to the global police co-ordination agency.

Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness drops after 6 months -study

The effectiveness of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccine in preventing infection by the coronavirus dropped to 47% from 88% six months after the second dose, according to data published on Monday that U.S. health agencies considered when deciding on the need for booster shots. The data, which was published in the Lancet published medical journal, had been previously released in August ahead of peer review.

U.N. chief: Unchecked debt ‘dagger through heart’ for global recovery

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday that if left unchecked debt distress in the world’s most vulnerable countries would be “a dagger through the heart of global recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic. “The international community has taken a few positive steps, but it is time for a quantum leap in support,” Guterres said, speaking at the opening of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development in Barbados.

Tunisian president says 1.8 million people protested for him on Sunday

Tunisia’s President Kais Saied said on Monday that 1.8 million people had come onto the streets on Sunday during rallies in support of him that appeared to bring out only a tiny fraction of that number. “Yesterday was a historic day with about 1.8 million taking to the street,” said Saied in a video his office posted online.

Two Americans win Medicine Nobel for work on heat and touch

American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for the discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch and could pave the way for new pain-killers. Their work, carried out independently, has helped show how humans convert the physical impact from heat or touch into nerve impulses that allow us to “perceive and adapt to the world around us,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said.

Taliban say forces destroy Islamic State cell hours after Kabul blast

Taliban government forces destroyed an Islamic State cell in the north of Kabul late on Sunday in a prolonged assault that broke the calm of a normally quiet area of the capital with hours of explosions and gunfire, officials and local residents said. With Afghanistan’s economy close to collapse and large areas of the country in danger of famine, the presence of an apparently well-armed militant cell in Kabul underlined the daunting scale of the challenge facing the new government.

Japan’s new PM calls Oct. 31 election, vows to fight pandemic

Japan’s new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Monday called a parliamentary election for Oct. 31 and vowed to bolster the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, shortly after being formally confirmed by lawmakers in the top job. Kishida, a 64-year-old former foreign minister with an image as a consensus builder, earlier unveiled a cabinet line-up dominated by allies of former prime minister Shinzo Abe and ex-finance minister Taro Aso.

Pandora Papers: Rich and powerful deny wrongdoing after dump of purported secrets

The Czech prime minister, the king of Jordan and the chairman of a well-known Indian conglomerate were among global figures denying wrongdoing on Monday after the leak of what major news outlets called a secret trove of documents about offshore finance. India said it would investigate cases linked to the data dump, known collectively as the “Pandora Papers”, while Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said officials named in the documents would be investigated – including himself.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)