Global News

By Associated Press | Posted By TOE Colombia’s government on Saturday rejected a move by Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa to eliminate tariffs on Colombian imports because of a tariff commitment made to an opposition candidate, calling it “deliberate interference” in the  ongoing electoral process . Noboa said Friday after talks with Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella that he was committed to jointly fight narcoterrorism and would eliminate a security tax on June 1. Colombia’s Foreign Ministry responded on Saturday by saying the repeal of tariffs imposed by Ecuador on bilateral trade stems from a resolution issued by the Andean Community of Nations and rejected its portrayal as “a goodwill gesture by the Ecuadorian leader.” The ministry also described Noboa’s remarks as “deliberate interference in the electoral process” and as “intrusion by a foreign leader” that constitutes a “flagrant violation of the principle of non-intervention in intern...

By DPA, Psoted By TOE Four men who were trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for around 10 days have escaped safely, a member of the rescue team told dpa on Saturday. Josh Richards, a cave diver involved in the rescue operation, said the men managed to crawl out on their own. “They did it themselves – we swapped the pumps, left the cave and [I] was about to head in when they emerged on their own,” Richards said. Seven men became trapped after heavy rainfall flooded a cave they had entered to dig for gold in the mountainous Longchaeng district of Xaisomboun province on May 19. Other gold prospectors managed to escape and alert the authorities. Five of the men were found alive on Wednesday, and had been waiting in a small chamber hundreds of metres from the cave’s entrance. One of them was successfully rescued on Friday. A video obtained by dpa showed the other four men emerging from the cave complex one by one on Saturday to the cheers of the...

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...