Global News

At least 52 guerrilla fighters were killed in clashes between two rival armed groups vying for control of ​a strategic cocaine production and trafficking region in Colombia, a faction of the ‌Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) involved in the fighting said in a statement on Thursday. The clashes, the most violent in recent months, took place ahead of Sunday’s presidential election, when Colombians will elect a successor to leftist ​President Gustavo Petro, who has struggled to implement peace talks with the country’s ​numerous armed groups. Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed on social media that there ⁠had been fighting in the area, as did the Army, but neither provided details ​on the death toll. Sanchez said troops had been deployed to the area to protect ​the civilian population. Reuters was unable to independently verify the 52 deaths reported by the guerrilla group. The fighting took place between a dissident faction of the FARC led by ...

By AFP and Posted by TOE President Rodrigo Paz warned Wednesday that Bolivia was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and life-saving medicine. The US-backed Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis here in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his center-right policies. The political capital La Paz has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the majority Indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order, and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old leader said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, Congress lifted restrictions on him announcing a state of emergency, paving the way for Paz to possibly deploy troops to restore order. Paz has so far emphasized the need for dialogue but has not ruled out using “constitutional instruments” to end the blo...

By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press | Editing By TOE  Nasa has released details of robotic landers, hopping drones and vehicles it aims to send to the Moon as part of US plans to build a lunar base. NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II’s record-breaking lunar flyaround. The space agency outlined the first phase of its moon base plans on Tuesday, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will provide a pair of landers to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface, at a spot near the moon’s south pole. These so-called lunar terrain vehicles will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which landed successfully on the moon last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon. All this hardware is ideally supposed to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land on the moon, planned for as early as 2028. Du...

By  HYUNG-JIN KIM and KIM TONG-HYUNG ,Associated Press  North Korea launched a close-range ballistic missile and other weapons toward the sea on Tuesday, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of weapons demonstrations by North Korea this year. The missile fired from Jongju, a city near the North’s west coast, flew about 80 kilometers (50 miles), South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. North Korea launched other kinds of projectiles, it said, but didn’t elaborate. South Korea’s military, under a solid alliance with the U.S., maintains a readiness to repel any provocations by North Korea, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. South Korea’s military has bolstered a surveillance posture, it said. It was North Korea’s first weapons launch event since April 19, when the country fired multiple short-range missiles in what state-media described as a demonstration of cluster bomb warheads. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has focused on...

Myanmar’s military has launched renewed offensives into several border regions, including a frontier area with critical rare earth deposits and other vital trade routes, a month after a new administration took formal control of the war-torn country. New military chief Ye Win Oo, who took office in March after his long-time predecessor stepped down to become president, is ​making an aggressive push to reclaim strategic border strongholds from ethnic armies that have gained strength in recent years, spokesmen ‌for rebel groups and analysts told Reuters. The military’s recent offensives have focused on Kachin State, a region rich in heavy rare-earth elements that abuts China, as well as Chin State on the Indian border and a key trade corridor in Karen State, next to Thailand. At a meeting last week, Ye Win Oo told soldiers that the military had secured Falam town in Chin State and an arterial route between Mandalay and Myitkyina in Kachin State, the state-run Global New Light...

A blast targeting a train carrying military personnel killed at least 24 people on Sunday in Pakistan’s turbulent southwestern province of Balochistan, a senior official said. Army servicemen were among the victims of the attack in the provincial capital Quetta, which wounded more than 50 people, the official told AFP. The attack, which was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) militant group, was branded a “cowardly” act of terrorism by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Images showed a mangled train carriage on its side as people clambered over the wreckage to find survivors. People could be seen carrying blood-soaked victims on stretchers away from a derailed car, while armed security forces stood guard. The local official told AFP that the train carrying army personnel and their family members was going from Quetta to Peshawar in Pakistan’s northwest. The train was passing a signal at Chaman Pattak in Quetta “when an ...