ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday he will raise the subject of Israel’s "massacres" in Gaza at the U.N. General Assembly and voiced hope that wider recognition of Palestine would speed efforts for a two-state solution.

Speaking to reporters before departing for New York, Erdogan said he would discuss cooperation on trade and the defence industry with U.S. President Donald Trump, and that he would also meet Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa during his trip.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Vietnam was crowned the winner of the Russian-hosted Intervision song contest in the early hours of Sunday morning, a competition backed by President Vladimir Putin and conceived as a geopolitical and socially conservative rival to Eurovision.

Putin in February ordered the revival of Intervision, a Soviet-era regional musical contest based on "traditional family values" after Moscow was excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest in 2022 following Putin's decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

After losing his arms in an ordnance explosion, Syrian teenager Mohammed Hasram was fitted with prosthetic limbs funded by Saudi Arabia, which is leveraging major investments and aid to gain influence over Damascus.

Since the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad in December, Saudi Arabia has showered the new leadership with millions of dollars in assistance and investment pledges in the hope of steering it further into the kingdom's sphere of influence, analysts told AFP.

Britain, Australia, Canada and Portugal recognised the State of Palestine on Sunday, a historic shift in decades of Western foreign policy that drew swift anger from Israel and a rebuke from the United States.

Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip welcomed the recognition as a victory, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed in response that a Palestinian state would never exist.

The United States also criticised the the moves as "performative" and said it was focused on finding a diplomatic solution to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

CAIRO (Reuters) -Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has left for New York to participate in an upcoming meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, Qatar's Amiri Diwan said on Sunday.

World leaders are gathering in New York as the war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip approaches two years. A humanitarian crisis is worsening in the Palestinian enclave, where a global hunger monitor has warned that famine has taken hold and is likely to spread by the end of the month.

(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din; Editing by Tom Hogue)

By Katharine Jackson and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened "bad things" would happen to Afghanistan if it does not give back control of the Bagram air base to the United States, and declined to rule out sending in troops to retake it.

"If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN," Trump said in a Truth Social post.

By May Angel

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel's military kept up its assault on Gaza City and the wider Gaza Strip on Saturday, dismantling underground shafts and booby-trapped structures in attacks that killed at least 60 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities.

The assault came as 10 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Britain and Canada, are scheduled to formally recognise an independent Palestinian state on Monday, ahead of the annual leaders' gathering at the U.N. General Assembly next week.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Olivia Le Poidevin

GAZA (Reuters) - For a decade, Palestinian bank worker Shady Salama Al-Rayyes paid into a $93,000 mortgage on his flat in a tall, modern block in one of Gaza City's prime neighbourhoods. Now, he and his family are destitute, after fleeing an Israeli demolition strike that collapsed the building in a cloud of black smoke and dust.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened Afghanistan with unspecified punishment if the Taliban-controlled country did not "give Bagram Airbase back."

"If Afghanistan doesn't give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!" the 79-year-old leader wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The vague threat came just days after he raised the idea of the United States retaking control of the base while on a state visit to the United Kingdom.

(Reuters) -Argentine President Javier Milei will meet with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, on Tuesday as part of his trip to New York, the South American country's presidential press office reported on Saturday.

Milei, who maintains an international policy aligned with the United States and Israel, will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, which will be held next week in New York.