Global News

 Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime on Thursday when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. After two days of deliberation, the 12-member jury pronounced Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts he faced. Trump watched the jurors dispassionately as they were polled to confirm the unanimous verdict. Justice Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before the Republican Party is scheduled to formally nominate Trump for president ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The crime of falsifying business documents carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison, though those convicted often receive shorter sentences, fines or probation. Incarceration would not legally prevent him from campaigning, or taking office if he were to win. Donald Trump’s historic conviction in his hush money trial drew angry reactions Thursday from supporters of the Repu...

By KANIS LEUNG and ZEN SOO, Associated Press Fourteen pro-democracy activists were convicted in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case on Thursday by a court that said their plan to effect change through an unofficial primary election would have undermined the government’s authority and created a constitutional crisis. After a 2019 protest movement that filled the city’s streets with demonstrators, authorities have all but silenced dissent in Hong Kong through reduced public choice in elections, crackdowns on media and the Beijing-imposed security law under which the activists were convicted. Those found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion included former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung, Lam Cheuk-ting, Helena Wong and Raymond Chan, and they could face up to life in prison when sentenced later. The two defendants acquitted were former district councilors Lee Yue-shun and Lawrence Lau. But the prosecution said it intends to appeal against the acquittals. The activists were among...

Colombia’s congress voted on Tuesday to ban bullfights in the South American nation, delivering a serious blow to a centuries old tradition that has inspired famous songs and novels but has become increasingly controversial in the countries where it is still practised. The bill approved by Colombia’s congress calls for the banning of bullfights in a three year span, making the tradition illegal by the start of 2028. The new law now needs to be signed by President Gustavo Petro, who has been a long time opponent of these events. Bullfighting originated in the Iberian peninsula and is still legal in Spain, France, Portugal, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico, among other countries. It was once a popular event, broadcast live by multiple television networks. But the tradition has come under increased scrutiny as views change about animal rights, and many find it unacceptable to see an animal suffer for entertainment’s sake. In bullfights, a matador faces bulls that are bred to be aggressive. Th...

By Sarah Morland Reuters The president of this decade’s summit for Small Island Developing States on Monday blasted “empty” and “grossly inadequate” climate pledges, saying wealthy nations have failed to meet obligations to limit damages from carbon emissions. Small island states across the Pacific, Atlantic and Caribbean, with negligible emissions, are particularly vulnerable to economic crises and rising temperatures due to their exposure to natural disasters, high debt and reliance on imports and tourism. The Atlantic hurricane season, starting in June is expected to be more active than usual due to near-record warm Atlantic Ocean temperatures and cooler surface water in the Pacific. “It is not sufficient for nations to simply make empty and grossly inadequate commitments under the Paris Agreement,” conference president and Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said, citing a 2015 treaty to limit emissions and prevent temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius ...

Myanmar’s Muslim-minority Rohingya community is once again under threat of attacks and displacement as fighting between a powerful ethnic army and the country’s ruling junta escalates in the western state of Rakhine, according to UN and aid agencies. Tens of thousands of Rohingya are estimated to have fled for safety towards neighbouring Bangladesh since mid-May, which is reluctant to accept more refugees, and many of those remaining in Rakhine are in dire need of humanitarian aid. The Arakan Army (AA) claimed control of Buthidaung town earlier in May following fighting during which the ethnic army was accused of singling out Rohingya community members. The AA denies the charges. Reuters could not independently verify the claims, and a junta spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. The AA is now bearing down on the border town of Maungdaw, also home to a large Rohingya population, that the Myanmar junta will likely attempt to hold, raising the spectre of more serious v...

By Lucinda Elliott Reuters José Mujica, a one-time guerrilla, prisoner and later president of Uruguay who has cemented himself as an icon of the Latin American left, maintains that he is a farmer and nature lover above all else. At his smallholding on the outskirts of Uruguay’s capital Montevideo, the former president who turned 89 this week said he still feeds the chickens and enjoys a turn on the tractor. “It’s more entertaining than a car, you are in permanent contact with nature, with the bugs and the birds,” Mujica said in an interview with Reuters at his unpretentious single-storey home. It is the same tin-roofed house where he chose to live throughout his presidency from 2010 to 2015, having refused to move into the presidential residence. The old VW Beetle he famously drove from the farm to work is still in “phenomenal” shape, he said, but on a tractor, “you have time to think.” Mujica’s progressive thoughts are what transformed him from a boy who helped his mother grow fl...

Rescue crews arrived at the site of a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea’s remote highlands Saturday, helping villagers search for hundreds of people feared dead under towering mounds of rubble and mud. The disaster struck an isolated part of Enga province around 3:00 am Friday, according to government officials, wiping out swathes of the hillside settlement as villagers slept. “At this time, we are still searching for bodies who are buried by the massive landslide,” local leader Mark Ipuia said Saturday, adding he feared “more than 300” people were buried under the debris. Both the United Nations and Red Cross have said the death toll could be substantially higher than 100, although they cautioned it could take days until a reliable estimate emerges. “While verified casualty numbers are still pending, people living in the approximately 60 destroyed homes are unaccounted for,” said a UN situation report seen by AFP on Saturday. So far, at least four bodies have been recovered, ...

Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in a camp in the Sudanese city of al-Fashir, activists said, after a raid by Rapid Support Forces paramilitary forces who are fighting to seize the last army stronghold in the western Darfur region. RSF troops attacked and looted the vast Abu Shouk camp on Wednesday, killing an unknown number of people and wounding at least 13, locals said, more than a year into Sudan’s war. Around 60% of the more than 100,000 inhabitant fled on Thursday, according to the Coordinating Committee for Refugees and Displaced People, which oversees camps in the region. Fighting continued in other parts of al-Fashir on Friday, locals said. The RSF and its allies swept through four other Darfur state capitals last year, and were blamed for a campaign of ethnically driven killings against non-Arab groups and other abuses in West Darfur – accusations they have dismissed. There was no immediate comment from the RSF or the army on the latest clashes in al-Fashir, a...

By Marie Julien and Clare Byrne AFP Israel’s more than seven-month war in Gaza since the October 7 attack has revived a global push for Palestinians to be given a state of their own. Norway, Spain and Ireland all announced plans on Wednesday to recognise a State of Palestine, breaking with the long-held position of Western powers that a Palestinian state can only come as part of a negotiated peace with Israel. According to the Palestinian Authority, which has limited powers in parts of the occupied West Bank, 142 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations already recognise a State of Palestine. They include many Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries, but not the United States, Canada, most of western Europe, Australia, Japan or South Korea. In April, the United States used its veto at the UN Security Council to prevent a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member state. Here is a quick recap of the Palestinians’ quest for statehood: – 1988: Arafat proclaims state – ...

By Debora Ely Reuters Stranded for nearly three weeks by record flooding in southern Brazil, one tiny Indigenous community is determined not to evacuate what they consider sacred ancestral lands that are in dispute with real estate developers. The Mbya Guarani people have been living since 2018 on a peninsula in far southern Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul. The community has long been at odds with Arado Empreendimentos Imobiliarios, the firm that has been planning a residential development on nearly 426 hectares (1,053 acres) in the area for over a decade, part of which is in dispute. Heavy rains have battered Rio Grande do Sul since late April, causing historic floods that have killed over 160 people, while nearly 100 residents are still missing and more than 500,000 have been displaced. Even with the  devastating floods , community leaders say they would not consider leaving. “After this flood dries up I’m going to go further over there,” chieftan Timot...

By Kirsty Needham and Lucy Craymer Reuters Australia and New Zealand began evacuating nationals from New Caledonia on Tuesday, with government planes arriving in the French territory which has experienced a week of deadly riots, sparked by electoral changes by the French government in Paris. France’s High Commission in New Caledonia said on Tuesday the airport remains closed for commercial flights, and it will deploy the military to protect public buildings. There were around 3,200 people waiting to leave or enter New Caledonia as commercial flights were cancelled due to the unrest that broke out last week, the local government has said. New Zealand, Japanese and some Australian tourists had left with consular officials to travel to the domestic airport, staff and tourists at one Noumea hotel said on Tuesday afternoon. Australian officials said passengers are being prioritised based on need. Those left behind are frustrated, said Australian Benen Huntley, honeymooning with wife Em...

By Parisa Hafezi Reuters Iran proclaimed five days of mourning for President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday, though the muted atmosphere revealed little of the spectacular public grief that has accompanied the deaths of other senior figures in the Islamic Republic’s 45-year history. While government loyalists packed into mosques and squares to pray for Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, both killed in a helicopter crash, most shops remained open and the authorities made little effort to interrupt ordinary life. A year after Raisi’s hardline government cracked down violently to end the biggest anti-establishment demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, opponents even posted furtive video online of people passing out sweets to celebrate his death. Laila, a 21-year-old student in Tehran, told Reuters by phone that she was not saddened by Raisi’s death, “because he ordered the crackdown on women for hijab.” “But I am sad because even with Raisi’s death this regime will not...

BY JOSEF FEDERMAN AP Israel’s foreign minister says the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is “a historic disgrace that will be remembered forever.” Israel Katz said Monday he would form a special committee to fight back against any such action and would work with world leaders to ensure that any such warrants are not enforced. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with their actions during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas. Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel. The prosecutor must request the warrants from a pre-trial panel of three jud...

A volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Halmahera has spectacularly erupted, spewing a grey ash cloud into the sky, and people from seven nearby villages have been evacuated, authorities said on Sunday. Mt. Ibu erupted on Saturday evening, sending ash 4 km (2.5 miles) high, as streaks of purple lightning flashed around its crater, according to information and images shared by Indonesia’s volcanology agency. A joint team comprised of police, military and search and rescue officials was dispatched to the area to evacuate residents from surrounding villages, Abdul Muhari, from the disaster mitigation agency, said in a statement. Photos shared by the disaster agency showed authorities assisting the elderly, while other residents were moved in pick-up trucks and accommodated in emergency tents for the night. The agency did not provide any information about how many people had been moved, but authorities have recommended that a seven-km (4.35-mile) radius be cleared. Indonesia’s vo...

A helicopter carrying Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi was involved in “an accident” in poor weather conditions on Sunday, state media reported, with a search underway and no news yet on his condition. “An accident happened to the helicopter carrying the president” in the Jofa region of the western province of East Azerbaijan, state television said. Search and rescue team were headed to the remote mountain area, state media in the Islamic republic reported, adding that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was also aboard the aircraft. “The harsh weather conditions and heavy fog have made it difficult for the rescue teams to reach the accident site,” state TV said in an on-screen news alert. State TV broadcast footage of an Iranian Red Crescent team walking up a slope in thick fog, as well as live footage of crowds of worshippers reciting prayers in the holy Shrine of Imam Reza in the city Mashhad, Raisi’s hometown. Sunday’s accident happened in the mountainous protected forest ...

By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY and JOSEPH KRAUSS AP An Israeli airstrike killed 20 people in central Gaza, mostly women and children, and fighting raged across the north as Israel’s leaders aired divisions over who should govern Gaza  after the war, now in its eighth month . Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu  has faced criticism from his own War Cabinet, with his main political rival,  Benny Gantz ,  threatening to leave the government  if a plan is not formulated by June 8 that includes an international administration for postwar Gaza. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan was expected to meet with top Israeli leaders on Sunday to discuss an ambitious U.S. plan for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel and help the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza in exchange for a path to eventual statehood. Netanyahu, who is opposed to Palestinian statehood, has rejected those proposals, saying Israel will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza and partn...

By Aya Iskandarani AFP In a no-man’s land on Syria’s border with Iraq and Jordan, thousands are stranded in an isolated camp, unable to return home after fleeing the government and jihadists years ago. When police defector Khaled arrived at Rukban, he had hoped to be back home within weeks — but eight years on, he is still stuck in the remote desert camp, sealed off from the rest of the country. Damascus rarely lets aid in and neighbouring countries have closed their borders to the area, which is protected from Syrian forces by a nearby US-led coalition base’s de-confliction zone. “We are trapped between three countries,” said Khaled, 50, who only gave his first name due to security concerns. “We can’t leave for (other areas of) Syria because we are wanted by the regime, and we can’t flee to Jordan or Iraq” because the borders are sealed, he added. The camp was established in 2014, at the height of Syria’s ongoing war, as desperate people fled Islamic State group jihadists and go...

Heavy clashes and bombardment Saturday rocked Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, witnesses said, as the Israeli military announced the first 310 pallets of humanitarian aid had entered the besieged territory via a US-built pier. More than 10 days into what the Israeli military called a “limited” operation in Rafah, fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants has also flared again in Gaza’s north. The Kuwaiti hospital said an overnight Israeli strike killed two people in a displacement camp in Rafah, with witnesses reporting heavy gunfire and shelling in the city’s southeast and jets bombarding its eastern areas. AFP correspondents, witnesses and medics said there were intense battles overnight in the northern Jabalia refugee camp, after the Israeli army reported on Friday “perhaps the fiercest” violence in the town in more than seven months of war. Israel in early January said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza, but the army said the Palestin...

Officials in the South African city of George halted the search for survivors and more bodies on Friday at the site of a collapsed building where 33 people died. Rescue personnel  and volunteers have been combing through the rubble  for 11 days , after the five-storey residential building under construction in the city east of Cape Town crumbled, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The Western Cape government said it now believed 62 people were at the site at the time of the disaster. Twenty-nine people survived after being rescued. At one stage municipal officials believed 81 people were on site when the building came down. “The site is empty. We have done our job,” Anton Bredell, a Western Cape provincial official, told reporters. It is believed that migrants from neighbouring Malawi and Zimbabwe were working at the construction site as well as South Africans. A spokesperson for Malawi’s foreign affairs ministry said nine Malawians were confirmed to have died in the i...

By Ben Blanchard and Fabian Hamacher Reuters Taiwanese lawmakers shoved, tackled and hit each other in parliament on Friday in a bitter dispute about reforms to the chamber, just days before President-elect Lai Ching-te takes office without a legislative majority. Even before votes started to be cast, some lawmakers screamed at and shoved each other outside the legislative chamber, before the action moved onto the floor of parliament itself. In chaotic scenes, lawmakers surged around the speaker’s seat, some leaping over tables and pulling colleagues to the floor. Though calm soon returned, there were more scuffles in the afternoon. Lai, who is to be  inaugurated  on Monday, won January’s election, but his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament. The main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has more seats than the DPP but not enough to form a majority on its own, so it has been working with small Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to promote their ...

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s condition has stabilised but was still “very serious”, his deputy said Thursday, a day after Fico was shot multiple times in an attack the government in Bratislava decried as “political assault”. Surgeons spent hours in the operating theatre overnight, battling to save the 59-year-old leader after the attack, which has been condemned around the world. “During the night doctors managed to stabilise the patient’s condition,” deputy prime minister Robert Kalinak told reporters gathered at the hospital where the Slovak premier was being treated. “Unfortunately, the condition is still very serious as the injuries are complicated,” added Kalinak, who is also the defence minister and Fico’s close ally hailing from his Smer-SD party. The director of the Banska Bystrica hospital, where the Slovak premier was transported after sustaining gunshot wounds, said Fico underwent a “five-hour surgery carried out by two teams”. “He will stay at the intensive care...

By James EDGAR AFP Leaders  Xi Jinping  and  Vladimir Putin  framed their nations’ ties as a stabilising force in a chaotic world as they met Thursday in Beijing, where the Russian president is seeking greater Chinese support for his war effort in Ukraine and isolated economy. It is Putin’s first trip abroad since his March re-election and the second in just over six months to China, an economic lifeline for Russia after the West hit it with unprecedented sanctions over its military offensive in Ukraine. Putin was greeted by Xi at a grand welcoming ceremony outside Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, footage by state broadcaster CCTV showed. In a meeting, Xi then told his “old friend” Putin that China-Russia relations were “conducive to peace”. “China is ready to work with Russia to… uphold fairness and justice in the world,” Xi added. Putin, in turn, told Xi the two countries’ relations were “stabilising factors in the international arena”. “Relations be...

The shooting Wednesday of Slovakian Prime Minister  Robert Fico  in the town of Handlova following a political event sent shockwaves across Europe three weeks before EU parliament elections are scheduled to be held. Leaders from across the political divide denounced the apparent assassination attempt against the populist, pro-Russian leader, calling it an attack on democracy. Here’s what European leaders and others are saying: “What has happened is something that we cannot seem to realize because we cannot comprehend it. A physical attack on the prime minister is, first of all, an attack on a person, but it is also an attack on democracy. Any violence is unacceptable. Hateful rhetoric we’ve been witnessing in society leads to hateful actions. Please let’s stop it.” – Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, Fico’s political rival, in a televised statement. —- “An assassination attempt on one of the highest constitutional officials is an unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy. ...