Author: AFP
Thousands of Uruguayans lined the streets of Montevideo Wednesday to bid farewell to deceased former leader Jose “Pepe” Mujica, famed for his humility and once known as the “world’s poorest president.” The 89-year-old erstwhile leftist guerrilla, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost a year-long battle against cancer on Tuesday. He passed away at his humble home on a small farm on the outskirts of the Uruguayan capital with his wife, fellow revolutionary fighter Lucia Topolansky, by his side. Topolansky, 80, and President Yamandu Orsi, Mujica’s political heir, on Wednesday led a funeral procession with the…
US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa backed normalisation with Israel in the future, after the two leaders met as Washington lifted sanctions on Syria. “I told him (Sharaa), I hope you’re going to join (the Abraham Accords) once you’re straightened out and he said yes. But they have a lot of work to do,” Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force one while heading to Doha from Riyadh.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was not on a list of negotiators the Kremlin published for talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday, despite Kyiv insisting he attend and some allies calling on him to attend. The Kremlin late Wednesday named four negotiators — including a hawkish former culture minister — and four experts for the talks, set to take place on Thursday in Istanbul.
Doctors Without Borders slammed Israel Wednesday for creating a “deliberate humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and accused it of trying to make aid conditional on forced displacement of Palestinians. “We are witnessing, in real time, the creation of conditions for the eradication of Palestinian lives in Gaza,” the medical charity, known by its French acronym MSF, said in a statement. “Gaza has become a hell on earth for Palestinians.” Israel imposed an aid blockade on the Gaza Strip on March 2 after talks to prolong a January 19 ceasefire broke down. The resulting shortages of food and medicine have aggravated an…
Palestinians on Wednesday commemorated their displacement during the creation of Israel, saying that history was being repeated today in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Tens of thousands have been killed in Gaza and an aid blockade threatens famine, while Israeli leaders continue to express a desire to empty the territory of Palestinians as part of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack. In the West Bank, too, occupied since 1967, Israeli forces have displaced tens of thousands from refugee camps as part of a major military operation. This year marks the 77th anniversary of the Nakba –…
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Wednesday the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “ever more dramatic and unjustifiable”, stressing she had repeatedly urged Israel to find a way to end the conflict. “It is a request that I renew today in the face of a humanitarian situation in Gaza that I have no difficulty in defining as increasingly dramatic and unjustifiable,” Meloni told parliament. Meloni’s comments came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron called “shameful” the behaviour of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. In questions from parliament, she was pressed by an MP…
Raging conflicts, disasters and worsening climate change displaced tens of millions of people within their own countries last year, a new record, monitors said Tuesday. An unprecedented 83.4 million internally displaced people (IDPs) were registered in 2024 — equivalent to the entire population of Germany — amid mass displacement from conflicts in places like Sudan and Gaza, as well as floods and giant cyclones. That is more than double the number from just six years ago, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said in their annual joint report on internal displacement. “Internal displacement is…
Economic growth in Central Europe and the Balkans is expected to be strained this year by US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, Europe’s development bank forecast Tuesday. The London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has downgraded its growth forecast for the regions, anticipating tariffs fallout owing to their heavy dependence on Germany’s struggling economy. The United States in April imposed a 10 percent “baseline” tariff on nearly all US trading partners, along with sector-specific levies of 25 percent on cars, steel and aluminium. “Recent changes in US trade policy have left very few countries unaffected,” Beata Javorcik, chief economist…
More than 350 figures from the cinema world including Hollywood stars Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon condemned “genocide” in Gaza in an open letter published Monday on the eve of the Cannes Festival. “We cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza,” read the letter initiated by several pro-Palestinian activist groups and published in French newspaper Liberation and US magazine Variety. The signatories, which include acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and former Cannes winner Ruben Ostlund, decried the death of Gazan photojournalist Fatima Hassouna. Hassouna, 25, is the subject of a documentary which will premiere in Cannes on…
China is moving to strengthen its alliances with other countries as a counterweight to President Donald Trump’s trade war, presenting a united front with Latin American leaders at an event Tuesday in Beijing. China’s leaders have positioned the world’s second-largest economy as a reliable trade and development partner, in contrast to the uncertainty and instability from Trump’s tariff hikes and other policies. On Monday, Beijing and Washington announced a after weekend talks in Geneva, Switzerland, where they agreed to cut sky-high tariffs on both sides for 90 days to allow for negotiations. Having moved to defuse antagonisms with the U.S.,…