MOSCOW – Russia is pleased that a shipment of its oil reached Cuba despite a de facto US blockade of the island, the Kremlin said yesterday. Russia sent the Anatoly Kolodkin, a sanctioned oil tanker carrying 730 000 barrels of crude, to Cuba earlier this month as the Communist-run island grappled with fuel shortages. Shipping...
KHARTOUM – In Sudan’s Kordofan, now the fiercest battleground between the army and rival paramilitaries, 53-year-old trader Hamed Hamidan always keeps one eye on the sky, looking out for the drones that punctuate daily life. “They never leave the city,” Hamidan told AFP by text message from South Kordofan’s Dilling, where the army in January...
JOS – Gunmen killed at least a dozen people in Jos, the capital of Nigeria’s restive Plateau state, sparking retaliation from a mob that killed 10 more, locals told AFP yesterday. Plateau state, in central Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, experiences recurring violence in the countryside, mostly linked to land disputes between farmers and herders. Jos...
ABUJA – Nigeria’s ruling party rallied around its leadership early on Saturday at its first major get-together ahead of next year’s national elections as the country battles a resurgence of jihadist violence. More than 8 000 All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders and delegates endorsed the return of the party chairman and other office-holders by consensus...
TEHRAN – Iran’s parliament speaker yesterday accused the United States of plotting a ground attack despite talking about diplomacy, after a US warship with around 3 500 military personnel arrived in the Middle East. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s comments come after more than a month of aerial bombardment of Iran by US and Israeli forces and...
PARIS – France’s foreign minister said yesterday it would be “extremely serious” if Israel had deliberately targeted three journalists killed the previous day in a strike on south Lebanon. “If it is indeed confirmed that the journalists in question were deliberately targeted by the Israeli army, then this is extremely serious and a blatant violation...
KATHMANDU – Nepal’s former prime minister KP Sharma Oli appeared in court via video-link from a hospital yesterday after his arrest for his alleged role in a deadly crackdown on the 2025 protests that ousted him. Oli, 74, and ex-home minister Ramesh Lekhak were arrested in pre-dawn raids on Saturday, a day after Prime Minister...
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopians said Friday they slept in their cars in hours-long queues for petrol as shortages caused by the Middle East war began to take their toll. The effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes, has caused shortages in...
BEIJING – China warned the United States on yesterday against bringing “conflict and the chaos of war” to the Asia-Pacific, after Washington and its allies said they would weigh building a weapons base in the Philippines. A US-led intergovernmental defence group agreed last week to assess funding for a new ammunition assembly and production line...
DHAKA – Rescue teams, including navy divers, in Bangladesh have recovered 24 bodies from a bus that plunged into a river at a ferry crossing, officials said on yesterday. The bus sank into the deep waters of the Padna River in Goalanda on Wednesday, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) west of the capital, Dhaka. It...