Media powerhouse NET25 has closely monitored a weekend of world news that ran from a torpedo test in North Korea to a school roof in Peshawar, from a walkout at the IMF in Bangkok to a false earthquake alarm across Japan.
The network makes a conscious effort to carry world news for the Filipino household, because a strike on a Saudi airport reaches the OFW in Riyadh and the haze over Borneo rises from the same El Niño that has placed several areas of the Philippines vulnerable to the effect of the impending climate phenomenon. In short, world news is Filipino news when a relative is living in it.
The international stories on the NET25.com portal from October 16 to 18, 2026 show how wide that reach is, with ten stories posted on Friday alone and six more on Saturday.
On the Korean peninsula, North Korea announced the underwater test of a new torpedo guided by artificial intelligence, built on more than 180 tests over five years, two days after its missile chief Jang Chang Ha questioned whether South Korea’s first hypersonic glide vehicle had reached hypersonic speed.
On Russia and Ukraine, President Trump waived the tariffs and oil-purchase penalties due under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, nearly a dozen delegations walked out of the IMF steering committee in Bangkok when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov spoke, and EU leaders rallied around President Zelenskiy in Brussels.
In the Middle East, the portal carried a Reuters analysis of how the Houthis managed to hit Riyadh’s airport and the Aramco headquarters, pointing to Iranian know-how, Chinese commercial parts and air defenses depleted by the US-Israeli war on Iran, while Trump told Newsmax that the US may have to strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain.
On disasters and public safety, the Japan Meteorological Agency is investigating the first retracted warning in its history, a false magnitude 9.9 alert at 12:40pm on Friday that stopped the Tokaido Shinkansen for 15 minutes before the agency confirmed, eight minutes later, an actual magnitude 6.9 quake near Kamchatka.
The portal carried the week’s tragedies as well: a roof collapse at a private school in Peshawar that killed 34 children and a teacher, and a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon, where a 16-year-old killed three children and a teacher before a teacher and an armed parent stopped him.
On health and the environment, Congo’s Ebola outbreak reached an eighth province with more than 9,000 cases and 4,000 deaths, and an explainer traced Southeast Asia’s haze to Indonesia’s fires under a super-El Niño, with 283,270 respiratory cases in seven provinces as of October 13.
The two explainers, on the haze and on the Houthis, set the weekend apart, because beyond telling the reader what happened the desk took the news further by telling the reader why.
NET25 is deliberate about how it disseminates news from other areas. Each story is posted the same day it breaks with full wire credit, and on the biggest stories the desk writes Filipino-language versions as well, as it did with four pieces on the flydubai hijacking attempt last October 14. This is what makes NET25’s world news comprehensive while being accessible and comprehensible to the Filipino audience.
As always, these stories are free to read anytime, anywhere on the NET25.com portal, and the day’s world news is carried on Mata ng Agila International at 9:30pm on Digital Free TV Channel 28 and Analog Free TV Channel 25 as well.
NET25’s commitment to Filipinos at home and abroad continues through international news that follows the world’s events to the doorstep of the OFW, the seafarer and the family waiting for word. The “alternative mainstream” media giant keeps watch over the world so that the Filipino effortlessly receives news and information from other shores.
