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Coal mine explosion in China kills 90 people

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A gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s northern Shanxi province killed at least 90 people, state media said on Saturday, in the country’s deadliest mining accident in recent years. Official news agency Xinhua said the accident at Changzhi city’s Liushenyu coal mine happened on Friday evening. Around 247 workers were on duty at the time. Nine miners were still unaccounted for as of Saturday afternoon, Xinhua said, and more than 120 people were hospitalized. The cause of the explosion was under investigation, Xinhua reported, and rescue work is pressing on with hundreds of rescuers and medical personnel sent to the site. Among the injured, many were hurt by toxic gas, according to state media CCTV. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing, reported Xinhua. Xi also called for the “proper handling of the aftermath of the accident and urged a thorough investigation into its cause, with accountability pursued in accordance wi...
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NATO allies bewildered by Trump’s about-face on US troop moves in Europe

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BY MARK CARLSON and LORNE COOK AP NATO allies and defense officials expressed bewilderment on Friday at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to send  5,000 U.S. troops  to Poland just weeks after he had ordered 5,000 troops to be pulled out of Europe. “It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told reporters at a meeting she was hosting of her NATO counterparts, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. U.S. defense officials were also confused. “We just spent the better part of two weeks reacting to the first announcement. We don’t know what this means either,” said one of two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said “I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland.” He said this was due to his strong ties with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, whom Trump e...
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Cuba outraged after US indicts Raul Castro

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Cubans expressed their shock and indignation after the United States indicted former president Raul Castro on murder charges, a stunning new step in President Donald Trump’s pressure on the communist state. The charges against the ex-leader — who at 94 years old remains influential in Cuban politics — have fuelled speculation that Trump will try to topple the crisis-hit island, culminating a US pressure campaign which has imposed months of crippling oil blockades. Authorities in Cuba and abroad slammed the indictment, the latest step-up in Trump’s international interventions after the Iran war, the US toppling of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and threats against Greenland. The charges against Raul Castro — younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s communist revolution that culminated in 1959 — stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996. Cub...
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Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon kill 19, including children and women

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Israeli airstrikes on southern  Lebanon  on Tuesday killed at least 19 people, including four women and three children, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said, the latest in near-daily attacks from both sides that have not stopped despite the fragile,  U.S.-brokered ceasefire  in the Israel-Hezbollah war. Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the casualties or specific incidents, but said that between Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon, it had targeted more than 25 sites of Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. The  Israel-Hezbollah latest fighting  began on March 2 with the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group firing rockets at Israel, two days after the United States and Israel  attacked Iran . In Beirut, the government said a single strike on the village of Deir Qanoun al Nahr in the coastal Tyre province killed 10 people, including three children and three women. Three were wounded, including a child. The ministry provi...
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Protests over fuel price hikes turn deadly in Kenya

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Four Kenyans died and at least 30 were injured on Monday in fuel price protests triggered by the Middle East war, which saw the country’s public transport system grind to a halt. One of many African countries dependent on fuel imports from the Gulf, Kenya has been heavily affected by Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil normally passes. Last week, the Kenyan government announced price hikes in response to rising global oil prices, including a 23.5-percent increase for diesel — triggering a call for the strike by transport workers. Protesters barricaded roads and lit bonfires on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, early on Monday, attempting to stop cars and “boda boda” motorbikes, an AFP journalist saw. “It’s unfortunate that we lost four Kenyans in today’s violence, which also saw more than 30 people injured,” interior minister Kipchumba Murkomen told re...
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North Korea’s Kim calls for ‘impregnable fortress’ at southern border

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By Thomas Maresca UPI North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened a meeting with commanding officers from across the country’s armed forces and called for strengthening frontline defenses along the border with South Korea to create an “impregnable fortress,” state-run media reported Monday. Kim held the meeting at the headquarters of the ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee on Sunday, the official Korean Central News Agency said. It was the first known gathering of all division and brigade commanders since Kim took power in 2011. Kim called for the “rapid modernization of the military and technical equipment of our army” and stressed the need to adapt military training to the changing nature of modern warfare, KCNA said. He emphasized the country’s “territorial defense” policy, including “strengthening the first-line units in the southern border and turning the border line into an impregnable fortress,” a...
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WHO declares Ebola outbreak in DR Congo a global health emergency

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The World Health Organization declared an international health emergency on Sunday over an outbreak of an Ebola strain in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has killed more than 80 and for which there is no vaccine. Fears of further spread grew when a laboratory on Sunday confirmed a case in the major eastern DRC city of Goma, which is controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia. A total of 88 deaths and 336 suspected cases of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever have so far been reported, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC Africa) said in an update on Saturday. “A positive case in Goma has been confirmed by tests carried out by the laboratory. It involves the wife of a man who died of Ebola in Bunia, who travelled to Goma after her husband’s death whilst already infected,” Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), told AFP. WHO director general Tedros Adhanom G...
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