BEIJING – China will train thousands of law enforcement officers from different countries over the next 12 months, its police chief said yesterday, as it seeks to cement its role as a global security provider. Police from China have trained 2 700 officers in the past year and are planning to coach 3 000 more...
TEL AVIV – Major Israeli operations across the occupied West Bank are seriously worsening an already “calamitous” situation there that has been deepened by serious settler violence, the United Nations (UN) rights chief said yesterday. Opening a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Volker Turk, decried soaring violence in the West Bank...
TEHRAN – The European Union (UN) yesterday said its allies had shared intelligence that Iran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles, and warned of new sanctions on Tehran if the deliveries were confirmed. “We are aware of credible information provided by allies on the delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia,” EU spokesman Peter Stano...
Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an “independent and impartial force” to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of...
Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israeli forces traded cross-border attacks, both sides said early Sunday, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported three rescuers killed in an Israeli attack. The Iran-backed Lebanese movement has exchanged near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on...
WARSAW – Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has pardoned 30 people convicted for anti-government protests, his office said yesterday, four years after mass demonstrations gripped the Russian-allied country. Minsk carried out a massive crackdown on dissent after suppressing 2020 protests against Lukashenko, jailing hundreds of people and spurring a new wave of emigration. “Among the pardoned...
PARIS – With its ban of X, which went into effect on Saturday, Brazil joins a small club of countries to have taken similar measures against the social network, most of them run by authoritarian regimes. Beyond permanent bans, some nations have temporarily restricted access to X, formerly Twitter, which has often been used by...
JAKARTA – Pope Francis appealed yesterday for religious unity to counter extremism and intolerance, as the longest tour of the 87-year-old’s papacy got into full swing in Muslim-majority Indonesia. On the first full day of his four-nation trip to the Asia-Pacific, the pontiff zeroed in on the role all faiths can play on flashpoint security...
Gaborone – Botswana will hold general elections on 30 October, the president of the stable and diamond-rich southern African country announced on Tuesday. President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who is standing for a second five-year term, said in a televised address that 30 and 31 October would be public holidays to allow people to “vote in large...
JOHANNESBURG – A significant number of African youths are looking to leave because of unchecked corruption threatening their future. In a recent poll by the Johannesburg-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation, corruption is seen as the “single greatest hurdle” they face to achieve their potential and a better life. The poll studied people aged 18 to 24. ...