JAPAN: Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced today he will step down following growing calls from his party to take responsibility for a historic defeat in July’s parliamentary election.

Mr Ishiba had resisted demands from mostly right-wing opponents within his own party for more than a month, saying such a step would cause a political vacuum when Japan faces key challenges in and outside the country.

NORWAY: Voters in Norway go to the polls on Monday with the future of a wealth tax that has endured for over a century in doubt.

There is expected to be a close outcome between the centre-left bloc led by the Labour Party of Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s leader for the past four years, and a right-wing bloc.

SOUTH KOREA: Seoul said today it has reached a deal with the United States for the release of South Korean workers detained at a Hyundai plant in Georgia.

Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said a charter plane would be sent to bring the workers back home.

Some 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained by the Trump administration.

PORTUGAL: The first investigative report on the deadly derailment of a Portugal streetcar said on Saturday that a cable connecting the two cabins snapped.

Wednesday’s crash left 16 dead and injured 21 others in Lisbon’s worst tragedy in recent memory.

The report by the Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said the two cabins had traveled not more than about 20 feet when they suddenly lost the balancing force provided by the connecting cable.