Hurricane Melissa, Trump in South Korea, the Louvre robbery, Sudan, Nvidia: the night's news

Melissa: Hurricane Melissa has left Cuba and is heading towards the Bahamas after killing 20 people in Haiti. Emmanuel Pierre, head of Haiti's Civil Protection Bureau, told the Miami Herald that "the deaths occurred after the La Digue River flooded the city, sweeping away houses and burying them under mud." Three people also died in Panama, three in Jamaica, and one in the Dominican Republic. The hurricane headed towards the Bahamas on Wednesday, where a dangerous storm is expected starting today, and will then move towards Bermuda, which it is expected to reach Thursday evening, possibly with slight strengthening. Melissa was the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in 90 years when it struck Jamaica on Tuesday as a Category 5 storm, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, devastating large parts of the Caribbean nation.

Donald Trump orders a resumption of US nuclear testing. The US president instructed his Department of Defense on Thursday to "start testing" US nuclear weapons after his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, challenged him with a test of a nuclear-capable underwater drone. "The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country," he emphasized on Truth Social. This is false, according to The Guardian , which points out that, according to figures from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Russia possesses 5,500 nuclear weapons compared to 5,044 for the United States. During his visit to South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday, Trump also announced that he had granted Seoul permission to build a nuclear-powered submarine, a major decision that could allow the Asian country to join the select group of nations equipped with such a vessel. The US president, who had met with his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung a few hours earlier, stated that South Korea had also agreed to purchase large quantities of American oil and gas. A few hours later, the White House occupant announced that he had reached a one-year, renewable agreement with Xi Jinping on the supply of rare earth elements – a crucial material over which China holds a near-monopoly.

Louvre robbery: two suspects charged. Two men suspected of participating in this spectacular heist were remanded in custody Wednesday evening, but the stolen jewels remain missing. The two men in their thirties have “partially admitted to the facts,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau stated late Wednesday afternoon. They are suspected of being the ones who “entered the Apollo Gallery to seize the jewels,” she specified. The prosecutor added that “nothing at this stage allows us to assert that the perpetrators had any accomplices within the museum.” However, “we are not ruling out the possibility” of a much larger group than the four perpetrators identified by the security cameras, she emphasized. Laure Beccuau also said she “remains hopeful” that the jewels “ will be recovered.” “The problem is that the theft was likely commissioned and planned with the aim of dismantling the jewelry and selling the diamonds separately, making their recovery virtually impossible,” notes El País .

Sudan: WHO denounces mass killing at a maternity hospital in El-Fasher. The UN agency stated that more than 460 patients and their companions were killed at the Saudi-owned hospital, the last partially functioning health facility in the Sudanese city, which was seized by paramilitaries on Sunday. “We are sorry for the people of El-Fasher for the catastrophe that has befallen them, but […] war has been imposed upon us,” said the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Daglo, in a speech broadcast on his Telegram channel on Wednesday evening. Videos circulating online and authenticated by Al Jazeera 's Sanad fact-checking agency show paramilitaries executing and torturing people, the Qatari channel reports.

Nvidia's market capitalization has surpassed $5 trillion. The American chip giant became the first company in the world to cross this symbolic threshold on Wednesday, a testament to the growing appetite for artificial intelligence stocks. The company's valuation is higher than those of Tesla, Meta (Facebook), and Netflix combined. “But Nvidia's spectacular growth comes with a warning for investors—from the biggest banks on Wall Street to small shareholders,” cautions The New York Times . “The stock market is becoming increasingly dependent on a cluster of tech companies that generate billions in profits and spend massively developing unproven technology that will have to deliver huge returns.”