Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

NASA’s next-generation Artemis moon rocket tanks up for debut launch

Ground teams at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday began fueling NASA’s giant, next-generation rocketship for its debut launch on an uncrewed test flight to the moon, five days after an initial liftoff attempt was thwarted by technical problems. The 32-story tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule were due for blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT), kicking off the U.S. space agency’s ambitious moon-to-Mars Artemis program 50 years after the last Apollo lunar mission. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/3PPRsbN)

Pope dissolves Knights of Malta leadership, issues new constitution

Pope Francis on Saturday dissolved the leadership of the Knights of Malta, the global Catholic religious order and humanitarian group, and installed a provisional government ahead of the election of a new Grand Master. The change, which the pope issued in a decree, came after five years of often acrimonious debate within the order and between some top members of the old guard and the Vatican over a new constitution that some feared would weaken its sovereignty.

Iran equips 51 cities with civil defence systems – defence official

Iran has equiped 51 of its cities and towns with civil defence systems to thwart any possible foreign attack, a senior defence official said on Saturday, amid an escalation of tensions with Israel and the United States. The civil defence equipments enable Iran’s armed forces to “identify and monitor threats by using round-the-clock software according to the type of the threat and risk,” deputy defence minister General Mehdi Farahi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Thousands of Russians bid farewell to last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ‘the peacemaker’

Thousands of Russians filed past the open casket of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, on Saturday with many saying they wanted to honour his memory as “a peacemaker” who dismantled totalitarianism and gave them their freedom. Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1985-1991, died on Tuesday aged 91. His body lay in state in the grand Hall of Columns in central Moscow in the tradition of previous Soviet leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

Clashes rock outskirts of Libyan capital

Libyan armed factions fought in the western outskirts of Tripoli late on Friday and early Saturday as forces aligned with Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah’s government further consolidated their control over the capital. Fighting took place in Warshafala, a district west of Tripoli that has been the site of repeated clashes throughout the 11 years of violence and chaos since a NATO-backed uprising ousted veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Pakistan flood toll rises with 25 children among 57 more deaths

The toll from cataclysmic floods in Pakistan continued to climb on Saturday with 57 more deaths, 25 of them children, as the country grapples with a relief and rescue operation of near unprecedented scale. A high-level body set up to coordinate the relief effort met in Islamabad on Saturday for the first time, chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, to take stock of the disaster.

U.S. angers China with potential $1.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan

The U.S. State Department has approved a potential $1.1 billion sale of military equipment to Taiwan, including 60 anti-ship missiles and 100 air-to-air missiles, with China threatening to take counter measures. The Pentagon announced the package on Friday in the wake of China’s aggressive military drills around Taiwan following a visit to the island last month by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking U.S. official to travel to Taipei in years.

How a 92-year-old cleric silently halted Iraq’s slide back into war

When a pronouncement by a religious scholar in Iran drove Iraq to the brink of civil war last week, there was only one man who could stop it: a 92-year-old Iraqi Shi’ite cleric who proved once again he is the most powerful man in his country. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani said nothing in public about the unrest that erupted on Iraq’s streets. But government officials and Shi’ite insiders say it was only Sistani’s stance behind the scenes that halted a meltdown.

Russia, West step up energy war as risk of nuclear disaster haunts Ukraine

As UN inspectors sought to avert a nuclear disaster on Ukraine’s frontline, the West and Russia wounded each other’s economies, with Moscow keeping its main gas pipeline to Germany shut on Saturday while threatened with price caps on oil exports. Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom blamed a technical fault in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for the delay on Friday. But the high-level manoeuvres in energy politics were seen as an extension of the war, and the ramifications would be felt far beyond Ukraine.

Shenzhen districts locked down as China battles COVID outbreaks

Most residents of the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen went into a weekend lockdown on Saturday as mass COVID-19 testing kicked off in much of the city of 18 million people. The lockdown, and the suspension of bus and subway services, came into effect two days after city authorities said rumours about a lockdown were based on a “misinterpretation” of the latest COVID-19 prevention and control measures.

(With inputs from agencies.)