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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

U.S. and Nigerian forces killed a leader of the  Islamic State group  in Nigeria in a mission carried out Friday, U.S. President  Donald Trump  said. Trump announced the joint operation in Africa’s most populous country in a late-night social media post that offered few details. He said Abu Bakr al-Mainuki was second-in-command of the Islamic State group globally and “thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing.” Al-Mainuki was viewed as the key figure in IS organizing and finance, and had been plotting attacks against the United States and its interests, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share sensitive information. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said Al-Mainuki was killed alongside “several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.” According to the spokespe...

Clashes erupted Thursday in Bolivia’s capital as police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of miners trying to breach the government palace and setting off small dynamite charges, a tactic that has become increasingly common during this second week of nationwide unrest. It was the latest incident in growing social unrest challenging the administration of  President Rodrigo Paz , who was sworn in as president late last year, ushering a new era for the Andean nation after nearly 20 years of one-party rule. Thousands of miners descended on downtown La Paz to demand labor reforms and fuel, among other things, but as the hours passed, they began chanting slogans calling for the president’s resignation. Blockades and marches have paralyzed the Bolivian capital in the past days. Earlier in the day, rural schoolteachers marched through the city center to demand higher wages, further tightening the grip on the capital. SOURCE: Associated Press AND AGENCIES from The ...

By ADAM SCHRECK AP A ship anchored off the east coast of the United Arab Emirates has been seized and is heading toward Iranian territorial waters, the British military said Thursday. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said it received reports that the vessel was taken by unauthorized personnel while anchored 38 nautical miles (70 kilometers, 44 miles) northeast of the UAE port of Fujairah, near the Strait of Hormuz. The seizure comes as U.S. President Donald Trump is meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on a  much-anticipated visit to Beijing . The leaders’ talks are expected to focus on the war with Iran, which has seriously disrupted trade in oil, gas and other products and rattled the global economy. It happened hours after Israel said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had quietly visited the United Arab Emirates during the  Israeli-U.S. war  with Iran, though the UAE swiftly denied that any secret visit had occurred. The Gulf nation  nor...

By Danny Kemp AFP Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his US counterpart Donald Trump that missteps on Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict”, a stark opening salvo as they met in Beijing on Thursday at a superpower summit. Trump had arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend”, as he predicted that their countries would have “a fantastic future together”. But beyond the pomp as he welcomed Trump, Xi in less effusive tones said the two sides “should be partners and not rivals”, while highlighting the issue of self-ruled democratic Taiwan — which Beijing claims as its territory — straight off the bat. “The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” Xi said, according to remarks published by Chinese state media shortly after talks began. “If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come int...

By Timour Azhari and Parisa Hafezi Reuters Saudi Arabia launched numerous, unpublicized strikes on Iran in retaliation for attacks carried out in the kingdom during the Middle East war, two Western officials briefed on the matter and two Iranian officials said. The Saudi attacks, not previously reported, mark the first time that the kingdom is known to have directly carried out military action on Iranian soil and show it ‌is becoming much bolder in defending itself against its main regional rival. The attacks, launched by the Saudi Air Force, were assessed to have been carried out in late March, the two Western officials said. One said only that ‌they were “tit-for-tat strikes in retaliation for when Saudi (Arabia) was hit.” Reuters was unable to confirm what the specific targets were. In response to a request for comment, a senior Saudi foreign ministry official did not address directly whether strikes had been carried out. The Iranian foreign minis...

China reiterated its strong opposition to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan on Wednesday, calling on Washington to honour its commitments ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s arrival for a summit in Beijing. The issue ‌of democratically governed Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, and weapons sales to Taipei is certain to ‌be discussed during two days of meetings this week between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The U.S. is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means ​to defend itself, despite a lack of formal diplomatic ties. In December, the Trump administration announced an $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan, the largest ever. Zhang Han, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said Taiwan is an internal issue and a matter for the Chinese people. “We firmly oppose the United States engaging in any form of military ties with China’s Taiwan region, and firmly oppose the United States selling ‌weapons to China’s...

The Nigerian military and the “bandit” gangs it is fighting killed around 100 civilians Sunday in one of the bloodiest single days of the country’s conflict against armed groups, sources across the country have told AFP. The Nigerian military killed at least 72 people, many of them civilians, in an airstrike on a crowded market in the northwestern state of Zamfara, a community leader told AFP, with some bodies “blown beyond recognition”. Amnesty International’s Nigeria chapter said “at least 100 civilians” were killed in the attack on the market, reportedly controlled by criminal gangs, while a resident of a nearby village put the toll at 117. The strike came the same day that another attack by the Nigerian air force targeting bandits killed 13 civilians, in central Niger state, the victims’ families told AFP. News of attacks from both the Nigerian military and the various armed groups it is fighting often takes days...

By Niniek Karmini And Edna Tarigan, The Associated Press Rescuers on Indonesia ’s remote island of Halmahera found the bodies of two Singaporean hikers on Sunday, two days after they were caught in a volcanic eruption on Mount Dukono, officials said. The bodies of the men, aged 30 and 27, were located a few meters (yards) from where the first victim, an  Indonesian female hiker , was found dead on Saturday, Abdul Muhari, the National Disaster Management Agency’s spokesperson, said. All three had been about 50 meters (165 feet) from the rim of the main crater. The men’s bodies were covered by thick layers of volcanic material, Muhari said, adding that the densely packed material had complicated evacuation efforts and significantly slowed progress. “The bodies were buried under deep, densely packed volcanic material that is difficult to dig through,” Muhari said, “Rescue teams must proceed cautiously to ensure safety.” The trio were among 20 hikers who set ...

By Saud Mehsud and Mushtaq Ali Reuters A car bombing at a police post in northwestern Pakistan followed ‌by an ambush on police personnel rushing to the scene has ‌killed at least 21 officers, police said on Sunday. Images from after the attack on Saturday showed ​the structure had been reduced to rubble, with bricks, charred wreckage and mangled vehicles scattered around the area. Police official Sajjad Khan said in a statement that the bodies of 14 officers had been recovered from the collapsed outpost and three other personnel ‌were found alive and ⁠rushed to hospital. A police official who asked not to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media ⁠said militants first rammed into the post with an explosive-filled car and then entered the premises and began firing on any remaining officers. “Other law enforcement personnel were sent ​to help ​the police, but the terrorists ambushed them ​and caused some casualties,” he ‌said. ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has voiced confidence of victory in Ukraine as he oversaw a military parade on Red Square commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Speaking in front of hundreds of military personnel and flanked by a few world leaders, the Russian president said he was fighting a “just” war as he identified Ukraine an “aggressive force” that is being “armed and supported by the whole bloc of NATO”. Security was tight in Moscow as Mr Putin and several foreign leaders attended the parade, even as a US-brokered three-day ceasefire eased concerns about possible Ukrainian attempts to disrupt the festivities. Mr Putin, in power for more than a quarter of a century, has used Victory Day, Russia’s most important secular holiday, to showcase the country’s military might and rally support for his military action in Ukraine. Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, Lao President Thongloun Sisouli...

Russia and Ukraine launched major attacks on each other Friday, with a two-day unilateral ceasefire that Moscow had declared around its World War II commemorations appearing to be in tatters. Ukraine never said it would abide by Moscow’s call to halt strikes and lambasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin for only wanting to pause fighting so he could stage a grand parade on Red Square on Saturday. Kyiv said Moscow ignored a Ukrainian call to halt fighting earlier this week — a counter-proposal for a short-term ceasefire that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cast as a test of whether the Kremlin was serious about providing a brief respite in the four-year war. Russia has threatened a massive strike on the heart of Kyiv if Ukraine disrupts the Victory Day parade on Saturday, repeatedly urging foreign diplomats to evacuate the Ukrainian capital ahead of time. “On the Russian side, there was not even a token attempt to cease fire on the front,” Ze...