BAKU – Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad, who is the president of the COP16 UN conference on biodiversity, expressed confidence that a key financial accord for species’ protection could be reached “in the first quarter of 2025”. Delegates failed to agree a financial roadmap at the Cali summit earlier this month. But Muhamad told AFP...
SYDNEY – Australia, Japan and the US yesterday committed to closer military cooperation in training their forces as the countries deepened their ties in a bid to counter China’s military strength. Australia’s minister of defence Richard Marles hosted US defence secretary Lloyd Austin and Japan’s defence minister Gen Nakatani yesterday for the trilateral ministers’ meeting...
RAIPUR – Indian security forces have killed five Maoist rebels in jungle clashes, an officer said yesterday, as security forces seek to quash the decades-long insurgency in the resource-rich central regions. Gun battles took place in the Abujhmad forests of Chhattisgarh state on Saturday, taking the toll of the conflict in 2024 to around 200,...
GAZA STRIP – Strikes by the Israeli military killed dozens in Gaza yesterday, the civil defence agency said, while also hitting a Hezbollah stronghold near Beirut’s international airport. Israel has been fighting on two fronts since September, intensifying attacks on Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border clashes, alongside its war on Hamas...
BAKU – Host Azerbaijan tried to bring down the diplomatic temperature in Baku yesterday after a French minister cancelled her trip to the UN climate talks, and Argentina withdrew its delegation. While negotiators work behind closed doors at the COP29 talks to trash out a climate finance deal, the spotlight has been largely stolen by...
BEIRUT – Israel launched at least 10 air strikes on south Beirut yesterday morning, Lebanese state media said, shortly after Israel’s army urged residents of several neighbourhoods to evacuate the Hezbollah bastion. “Israeli warplanes launched a very violent 10th strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs,” the official National News Agency (NNA) repor ted. AFPTV footage showed...
DAKAR – Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko yesterday called for vengeance following what he described as attacks against supporters of his Pastef party by the opposition during the campaign for Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Sonko, who has been head of the government since it took office in April, spoke of clashes in the capital Dakar, the...
LAGOS – During his first term as US president, Donald Trump sparked outrage over his remarks about African nations, but African leaders have been quick to congratulate him on his re-election. They are calling for cooperation with mutual respect. Veteran Kenyan politician Raila Odinga, for one, has shrugged off Trump’s comments, made at a private...
African leaders descended on Gaborone last Friday to witness with excitement as advocate Duma Gideon Boko took over the reigns as Botswana’s sixth president, ending the leadership grip by the Botswana Democratic Party after 58 years. President Nangolo Mbumba and official opposition leader McHenry Venaani wereamong the attendees. The lawyer from the Umbrella for Democratic...
GAZA STRIP – Gaza’s civil defence agency yersterday said 30 people, including 13 children, were killed in Israeli strikes on two houses in the north of the Palestinian territory. The first strike early yesterday hit a house in Jabalia, northern Gaza, killing “at least 25” people, including 13 children, and injuring more than 30, civil...