Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) announced on Saturday morning that tropical cyclone Alfred has in the last hour weakened back to a tropical low pressure system and is now considered an ex-tropical cyclone, though more homes and premises in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) are suffering power outages.

The Guardian Australia quoted Queensland Premier David Crisafulli in the morning as saying that a quarter of a million homes in the Australian state do not have power, as well as Gold Coast University Hospital, which is running on generators.

That's the single biggest loss we have seen in over a decade, he added.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Saturday morning that the latest figures show there are around 43,000 premises, including homes and businesses, without power.

A week after the second anniversary of Greece's deadly train collision, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's government once again withstood a no-confidence vote.

The vote came after three days of intense debate, with Opposition parties fiercely criticising the government's handling of the 2023 rail disaster.

They accused the ruling administration of failing to address systemic issues in the railway sector and of not providing sufficient support to the victims' families.

This marks the second time the government has faced a no-confidence motion over the incident.

On March 28, 2024, Opposition parties had also filed a similar motion, blaming the government for neglecting to reform the railway system. That motion was also defeated by the majority held by Mitsotakis's New Democracy (ND) party in Parliament.

The South Korean ruling and Opposition parties sparred on Saturday over a court decision to release detained South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, deepening the political divide that has thrown the country into political turmoil.

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) demanded Yoon's immediate release, denouncing his detention as "illegal" during a protest in front of the Supreme Prosecutors Office in southern Seoul.

"They are still detaining the President 20 hours after the court ruled for his release," the PPP's interim leader Kwon Young-se said at the protest, urging the prosecution not to "give in to threats from the Opposition party."

The protest was attended by 35 PPP lawmakers, who chanted, "Release the President."

The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned British Ambassador to Tehran Hugo Shorter over the anti-Iran positions recently adopted by his country's senior officials.

In a statement released on Friday, the ministry said the British envoy was summoned to protest against senior British officials' "baseless claims" about Iran and their accusations that Tehran "seeks to interfere in Britain's internal affairs."

At the meeting, Alireza Yousefi, assistant foreign minister and the ministry's director general for Western Europe, stressed that the British officials' "biased positions and baseless claims" against Iran were "in contradiction with the international law principles and regulations as well as the diplomatic norms," and would increase the Iranian people's distrust of Britain's policies towards their country and the West Asia region.

He called on the British government to reconsider and revise its "unconstructive" approaches towards the Iranian nation.

US President Donald Trump has mentioned Taiwan and South Korea, as he argued that the United States lost semiconductor business to foreign countries.

During a press availability at the White House, Trump also renewed his criticism of the CHIPS and Science Act, calling it a "tremendous waste of money." The act was signed by his predecessor Joe Biden in 2022 to boost domestic chip manufacturing through incentives.

"We gradually lost the chip business, and now it's almost exclusively in Taiwan. They stole it from us. They took it from us," he said, underscoring that the business was once dominated by an American entrepreneur -- the late Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, reports news agency.

Syrian security forces on Friday launched a major operation against Qardaha, the hometown of former President Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor reported.

The operation, which saw the forces deploying tanks and armoured vehicles, followed their recent takeover of Baniyas, a strategic coastal city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

It came as Anas Hasan Khattab, head of Syria's General Intelligence Service, accused on social media former military and security officials from al-Assad's regime of directing attacks against Syria from abroad.

The SOHR reported earlier in the day that forces from the defense and interior ministries combed Baniyas and its surroundings, employing heavy artillery and machine guns.

It added that reinforcements continue to pour into coastal regions, suggesting a prolonged military campaign.

Nepal has sought India's financial, economic, technical inputs and suggestions on the viability of the 141km Raxaul-Kathmandu railway line that aims at establishing a direct link between the Indian border city and the Nepalese capital.

India and Nepal had recently held the 9th Project Steering Committee (PSC) and the 7th Joint Working Group (JWG) meetings on February 27-28 in New Delhi to review the implementation of ongoing cross-border railway links and overall bilateral cooperation in the railway sector.

Sushil Babu Dhakal, Joint Secretary at Nepal's Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transportation, who had led the visiting delegation at the meetings, told local media in Kathmandu on Friday that Nepal has now sought Indian perspective on the project's viability citing concerns over low financial return and the suggested 25-year payback period.

"We are in a nascent phase in building the railway and we have little understanding of it... On the other hand, we are also building an expressway to link Kathmandu with the southern plains, so in this context, we have asked the Indian side for technical insights," Dhakal told Nepal's leading daily, The Kathmandu Post.

The South Korean defence ministry said on Friday that a total of 29 people, including 15 civilians, have been injured from an accidental fighter jet bombing of a northern village earlier this week.

On Thursday, two KF-16 fighter jets "abnormally" dropped eight MK-82 bombs outside a training range in Pocheon, some 40 kilometres north of Seoul, during live-fire drills, leading to multiple injuries and damage to buildings.

As of Friday, 15 civilians and 14 service members were injured from the bombing, including six foreigners, the ministry said, up from 15 tallied the previous day. Of them, two South Korean civilians were seriously injured.

A South Korean court ordered impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol to be released from custody on Friday after accepting his request to cancel his arrest over his short-lived imposition of martial law.

Yoon has been held at a detention centre in Uiwang, just south of Seoul, since investigators detained him and brought him there on January 15 on charges of inciting an insurrection through his December 3 declaration of martial law.

With his release, Yoon will be able to stand trial without physical detention.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX lost contact with its spacecraft shortly after the launch of the eighth test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Friday.

The eighth test was launched at its Starbase site in South Texas at 6:30 p.m. EST on Thursday (5:00 am Friday IST).

About seven minutes after liftoff, Starship's giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy was caught by the Starbase's launch tower, using the structure's "chopstick" arms, called "Mechazilla," on the launch tower.

“Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster!” Musk shared in a post on social media platform X. However, the Starship spacecraft lost altitude control and lost communication with the ground.

“Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines. This, in turn, led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship,” SpaceX said in a blog post.