GRANADILLA DE ABONA – Occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has sparked international alarm began flying home from Spain’s Canary Islands yesterday in a complex repatriation operation. Three passengers from the MV Hondius — a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman — have died, while others have...
BUNIA – A militia attack killed at least 69 people in Ituri province in the conflict-torn northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), local and security sources told AFP Saturday. For more than 30 years the mineral-rich eastern DRC has been a battleground between various armed groups, vying for control of its many mines.Two...
TEHRAN – The naval stand-off in the Gulf threatened to boil over yesterday following days of clashes and tit-for-tat accusations, as a cargo ship was hit off Qatar and Iran warned it could target US interests in the region. Qatar’s defence ministry said the freighter had been arriving in the country’s waters from Abu Dhabi...
BEIJING – China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing would play a “greater role” in ending hostilities in the Middle East during talks with his Iranian counterpart yesterday, a week before US President Donald Trump is due to meet Xi Jinping. China is a key customer for Iranian oil, defying sanctions imposed by the United...
ADDIS ABABA – Moves by the dominant party in Ethiopia’s Tigray to restore its control of the region could lead to “disastrous” renewed conflict with the federal government, analysts warned yesterday. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fought a brutal civil war against the federal government between 2020 and 2022 that claimed at least 600...
SUVA – As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defence against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation, a popular tourist destination of just under a million people, there were over 2 000 new HIV cases...
BEIJING – The death toll from a giant explosion at a fireworks factory in central China rose to 26, with 61 more injured, officials said on Tuesday. The explosion occurred at around 16h43 on Monday at the Liuyang Huasheng Fireworks Manufacturing and Display Company in Liuyang, Hunan province, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Following the blast,...
BRIA – In a classroom in Bria in the unstable eastern Central African Republic, former child soldiers were learning to sew. It is a way to help the 14 to17 year olds move on from the violence they suffered at the hands of the country’s many armed groups. “It’s not easy teaching them. Some still...
MUMBAI – An Indian pilot group has submitted a letter to the aviation ministry suggesting that an electrical failure, rather than pilot action, could have caused the deadly Air India crash last year. The submission by the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), which has more than 5,000 members, comes ahead of the expected final report...
VIENNA – A prominent data protection group yesterday filed a complaint in Austria against LinkedIn over the professional networking platform’s selling of user data. Vienna-based Noyb, which stands for “None of Your Business”, said it filed a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority on behalf of a LinkedIn user wanting access to his data....