#Yemen’s Houthi rebels say mariners held since July attack on ship Eternity C are released to Oman.

#DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they have released mariners they have held since their attack in July on the ship Eternity C in the Red Sea.

The Houthis said Wednesday through their al-Masirah satellite news channel that Oman had taken custody of the mariners, who were flying to the sultanate.

Oman did not immediately acknowledge the release. However, a Royal Oman Air Force jet did land in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen held for over a decade by the rebels.

The Philippines on Tuesday had said it expected Filipino mariners held by the Houthis since the attack to be released.

Associated Press, The Associated Press

#ICE ordering fleet of 20 armoured vehicles from #Canadian firm.

OTTAWA — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earmarked millions of dollars for a bulk order for 20 armoured vehicles from Canadian defence manufacturer Roshel that are built to resist bullets and bomb blasts.

U.S. government procurement records show the department laying out plans for a rush order worth the equivalent of about C$10 million for 20 Senator STANG emergency response tactical vehicles.

The justification for the sole-source order was published in a partially redacted document on a U.S. federal procurement website on Nov. 26, and the site says a contract was awarded on Nov. 28.

The procurement document declares only Roshel, which is headquartered in Brampton, Ont., meets the department’s requirements for the vehicles needed “to support agents in the field” and can complete the order within 30 days.

“Roshel is uniquely positioned to fulfil this requirement within the necessary time frame, having confirmed immediate availability of vehicles that fully meet ICE’s specifications,” said the document, produced by ICE’s Office of Acquisition Management.

“While other sources were consulted, they had limited quantities available or none could fulfil the entire requirement within the required period of performance, nor meet all technical requirements.”

The purchase was first reported by the U.K.-based newspaper The Independent.

Roshel has said it has sent hundreds of Senator vehicles to Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia, although it makes different types. Company marketing materials state the emergency response vehicle’s floor is outfitted with blast protection.

The department, commonly known as ICE, is awash in controversy and allegations of human rights abuses as U.S. President Donald Trump pursues a campaign to expel vast numbers of immigrants residing in the country illegally.

The order comes despite Trump’s “America-first” trade policy and as he pursues a protracted trade war to poach jobs and plants from the Canadian steel, manufacturing and automotive sectors.

The department turned its nose up at other U.S.-based heavy vehicle manufacturers, saying Alpine Amoring Inc., CITE Armored, Inc., DGM LLC and Lenco Armored Vehicles did not meet all of the requirements or timeline.

“Delaying this procurement to pursue a fully competitive action would significantly impact operational readiness and hinder ICE’s ability to deploy mission-critical resources in a timely manner,” the procurement document said.

Roshel, Global Affairs Canada and ICE did not immediately replied to requests for comment Tuesday.

The document says the total price tag for the vehicle fleet will likely run US$7,331,200.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 2, 2025.

#MOSCOW, December 1. Russian President Vladimir #Putin visited a frontline command center late on November 30 to hear reports on the liberation of the cities of Krasnoarmeysk in the Donetsk People’s Republic (#DPR) and Volchansk in the Kharkov Region, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.

"Late on November 30, Russian President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin visited a command post of the Joint Force. He heard reports by Chief of the General Staff [Valery] Gerasimov, Commander of the Battlegroup Center [Valery] Solodchuk, and Commander of the Battlegroup East [Andrey] Ivanayev," Peskov said.

"Army General Gerasimov reported to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief about the liberation of the cities of Krasnoarmeysk in the DPR and Volchansk in the Kharkov Region, as well as about the results of offensive operations in other areas," he added.

Apart from that, Solodchuk reported to the president about the progress in the elimination of a Ukrainian battlegroup near the Krasnoarmeysk-Dimitrov agglomeration, "including about taking the southern part of the city of Dimitrov under the control of Russian forces, and about the situation in Krasnoarmeysk after it was liberated by our forces.".

Smith wants to work with B.C., still hopes for buy-in on lifting tanker ban.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she wants to work with British Columbia on a potential new pipeline but still hopes to convince that province to lift the federal tanker ban.

“I’m sensitive to the fact that we don’t want to see the entire coast of British Columbia, that has extensive port infrastructure. I understand that,” Smith told reporters in Calgary on Monday. “But we do have some existing ports that we can build on, and I’m hopeful that we’ll have a constructive conversation about it.”

Smith made the remarks when directly asked about comments B.C. Premier David Eby made to CTV Question Period on Sunday, who after months of vehement opposition to a bitumen pipeline, said he is open to one if the tanker ban remains in place.

“My anxiety is about this oil tanker ban, which is the foundational social license piece for tens of billions of dollars of investment in B.C.,” Eby told host Vassy Kapelos.

“If we can agree that the oil tanker ban is going to stay in place, then let’s have those conversations,” Eby later added.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Smith signed a historic memorandum of understanding (MOU) last week, outlining the conditions that need to be met for a new oil pipeline to the Pacific to proceed.

Leading up to the MOU announcement, Eby called it “unacceptable” that his province had been excluded from those discussions and warned that a tanker ban exemption would threaten projects already in development in the B.C. north coast region and consensus among coastal First Nations.

The tanker ban was officially enacted in 2019, but a moratorium on oil tanker traffic off the B.C. north coast has existed since the ‘70s. The ban prohibits oil tankers carrying over 12,500 metric tons of crude or persistent oil from docking, loading or unloading at ports on the B.C. north coast, and applies to waters from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border and encompasses the islands of Haida Gwaii.

“We will never tolerate exemptions to an oil tanker ban that has existed for over 50 years, and it is foundational to protecting our economy and our way of life,” Coastal First Nations President Marilyn Slett said to the media on Thursday, after the #MOU announcement.

Police officer killed in suicide bombing in northwest #Pakistan. The attack happened in Lakki Marwat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Ashfaq Khan said, without providing further details.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement condemned the attack.

Separately, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a military facility overnight in Nokandi, a district in the insurgency-hit southwestern Balochistan province, according to local media reports.

The Balochistan Liberation Front, a separatist group, claimed responsibility in a statement, saying its fighters targeted an office of the Frontier Corps and that an exchange of fire with troops was ongoing.

There was no immediate comment from the military or the government.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in violence in recent years, and the government often blames Balochistan-based separatists and the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, which is separate from, but aligned with, Afghanistan’s Taliban government.

The steady rise in attacks has strained relations between Islamabad and Kabul, with Pakistani authorities accusing the TTP of operating freely inside Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Afghanistan denies the allegation.

Tensions escalated between Pakistan and Afghanistan after the Taliban government accused Pakistan of carrying out an Oct. 9 drone strike on Kabul.

Cross-border clashes followed, killing dozens of soldiers, civilians and militants before Qatar brokered a cease-fire on Oct. 19 that remains in place, though talks between the two sides ended in Istanbul without an agreement. Iran and Saudi Arabia have offered to help revive the stalled talks.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week said that Pakistan will welcome mediation by friendly countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, but Islamabad only wants Kabul to rein in the TTP and other militants and stop them from using the Afghan soil for attacks inside Pakistan.

The Associated Press

#Indonesian residents hunt for food and water after deadly floods. 193 dead in Sri Lanka. The floods, which hit Indonesia nearly a week ago, have killed 442 people — with the number expected to rise as more bodies are recovered — and displaced 290,700 people. The deluges triggered landslides, damaged roads, cut off parts of the island, and downed communication lines.

Another 402 people are missing in Indonesia’s three provinces of North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

The challenging weather conditions and the lack of heavy equipment also hampered rescue efforts. Aid has been slow to reach the hardest-hit city of Sibolga and Central Tapanuli district in North Sumatra.

Videos on social media showed people scrambling past crumbling barricades, flooded roads and broken glass to get their hands on food, medicine and gas. Some waded through waist-deep floodwaters to reach damaged convenience stores.

The spokesperson for the police, Ferry Walintukan, said they received reports of people breaking into shops on Saturday evening, and that regional police had been deployed to restore order.

“The looting happened before logistical aid arrived,” Walintukan said. “(Residents) didn’t know that aid would come and were worried they would starve.”

Eleven helicopters were deployed from Jakarta to the affected areas the day after the disaster for ongoing logistics distribution operations, especially to areas where land access was cut off, Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya, said on Sunday, “but unpredictable weather often hampers aid operations.”

The Cabinet Secretariat released footage of the military airdropping supplies to the affected areas. In the village of North Tapanuli, survivors waved frantically to the helicopters carrying aid. Meanwhile, four navy ships docked at a port to support aid distribution.

Meanwhile, authorities in Sri Lanka said the death toll from floods and mudslides has risen to 193, with 228 others still missing.

Nearly 148,000 people have been displaced from their homes and are housed in temporary shelters.

Sri Lanka has been battered by severe weather since last week. Conditions worsened Thursday, with heavy downpours that flooded homes, fields and roads and triggered landslides mainly in the tea-growing central hill country.

Authorities say that Cyclone Ditwah, which developed in the seas east of Sri Lanka, is likely to move toward India’s southern coast Sunday.

France’s far-right leader hit by egg, days after flour attack. Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, was hit on the head with an egg Saturday, just days after another incident in which a protester threw flour at him.

Bardella was at an event in Moissac, southwest France, to promote his latest book when a man broke the egg on his head.

The suspected attacker, a 74-year-old man, was arrested and taken into custody for violence against a public official, prosecutor Montauban Bruno Sauvage told AFP.

A complaint has been filed in Bardella’s name over the incident.

On Tuesday, Bardella was covered in flour during a visit to an agricultural fair at Vesoul, in the east of the country.

Police detained a 17-year-old teenage boy before releasing him the following day, and he will have to attend a course on citizenship.

“The more we make progress, the closer we get to power, the more the violence from the far left, intolerance and pure stupidity are unleashed,” Bardella posted on X late Saturday.

“But a wind of freedom, national pride and patriotism is blowing across France, and they won’t be able to stop it,” he continued, adding that he was fine.

The National Rally senses its best-ever chance of winning power in the 2027 presidential vote, with Macron having served the maximum two terms.

Its three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is barred from running after being convicted in a corruption case, but her 30-year-old lieutenant Bardella could be a candidate instead.

Dictatorship-era army officers and supporters rally in #Argentina in latest sign of political shift.

Saturday’s demonstration was seen as a provocation in the country of Nunca Más, the slogan that represents Argentina’s commitment to “never again” return to authoritarianism.

Further raising tensions, the officers gathered in Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of protests by women searching for children who had been abducted, detained and “disappeared” by the junta. Circling the plaza in silent protest every Thursday for decades, the women became known as the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

To the army officers’ critics, including dozens of counter-protesters who also flocked to Plaza de Mayo in downtown Buenos Aires on Saturday, the brazen rally marked a worrying sign that cracks were starting to appear in Argentina’s national consensus about the bloody legacy of the dictatorship.
President Milei vows to end the army’s ‘demonization’

In a dramatic shift from past administrations, right-wing President Javier Milei has frequently justified the dictatorship’s state terrorism as a messy war against leftist guerrillas.

His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is the daughter of an Argentine lieutenant colonel and an ultraconservative lawyer who spent years advocating for armed forces and Argentines killed by left-wing guerillas — those she calls the “other victims” of terrorism.

The government’s push for a reconsideration of crimes by the dictatorship has enraged human rights groups, which see it as an effort to legitimize the military’s systematic extrajudicial killings of civilians. The junta is estimated to have killed or disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentines.

Milei made another contentious move last week when he appointed Army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Carlos Alberto Presti to be Argentina’s new minister of defense.

His office said this makes Presti the first military official since Argentina’s 1983 return to democracy to hold a ministerial title, “inaugurating a tradition that we hope the political leadership will continue” and ”putting an end to the demonization of our officers.”
Supporters of the military send a message

That Argentine society robs the military of respect it deserves was a common complaint among the protesters who gathered Saturday to sing the national anthem and raise banners demanding freedom for imprisoned colleagues.

“We demand the moral vindication of all the veterans,” said Maria Asuncion Benedit, the rally organizer whose late husband, an army captain, helped lead a brutal 1975 campaign against guerillas in the northern province of Tucuman.

“The Argentine people follow the official narrative. Whose narrative is it? The enemy’s, the terrorists’, those who fought against our soldiers,” she said, referring to how the left-wing Peronist governments of the early 2000s made recovering memories of the dictatorship and seeking justice for perpetrators hallmarks of their administrations.

“It’s a militant, activist judiciary,” Benedit said.

She and others brandished black bandanas — a loaded answer to the white kerchiefs embroidered with missing children’s names traditionally worn by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Unlike other Latin American countries that offered amnesty to those who committed military crimes after restoring democracy, Argentina has tried and sentenced more than a thousand army officials and officers for their participation in state terror, many to life in prison. Hundreds are still awaiting trial.

Pedro Nieto, a dictatorship-era veteran who traveled 36 hours from the northern province of Salta to attend Saturday’s rally, said he felt he was sending a potent message by calling for the release of his imprisoned colleagues at the symbolic Plaza de Mayo.

“We are proud to have fought and eliminated the terrorists,” he said.
A counter-protest signals wider outrage

Alejandro Perez, whose uncle was abducted and disappeared by the dictatorship, said it terrified him to see veterans like Nieto who participated in the deadly state repression “here in front of the government house, protected by police, protected by fences, being able to hold an event to demand the release of the few imprisoned genocidal criminals.”

Police cordoned off the ex-military officers’ demonstration, keeping them at a safe distance from angry counter-protesters who shouted insults and held signs bearing slogans like “Never Again” and “the 30,000 are present.”

“You feel it in your bones,” Perez said, drenched in rain as he marched among human rights advocates and left-wing organizations.

The dueling demonstrations come a day after the United Nations Committee Against Torture delivered a report in Geneva that raised alarm about the Milei government’s dismantling of programs that had investigated the military’s actions during the dictatorship as well as “its budget cuts to several institutions working on issues of memory, truth and justice.”

It also criticized the government’s lack of transparency about paying reparations to victims of the dictatorship.

A radical libertarian elected in late 2023, Milei has made it his mission to achieve a fiscal surplus by slashing state spending in a country notorious for its huge deficits. But even as he cuts spending on health and education, he has committed to boosting the military’s budget.

Addressing the U.N. torture committee annual meeting earlier this month, Alberto Baños, Milei’s top human rights official, disputed the report’s findings and insisted that his government was committed to “complete, unbiased and unobtrusive historical memory.”

“Whether you like it or not, the defense of human rights became a business, and we will not tolerate that,” he said.

Cristian Kovadloff And Isabel Debre, The Associated Press

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING #VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

U.S. officials contacted by Reuters were surprised by Trump’s announcement and unaware of any ongoing U.S. military operations to enforce a closure of Venezuelan airspace. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment and the White House did not provide any further explanation.

Venezuela’s communications ministry, which handles all press inquiries for the government, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s post.
Massive military buildup in Caribbean

David Deptula, a retired lieutenant general who commanded a no-fly zone over northern Iraq in 1998 and 1999, said Trump’s announcement raises more questions than it answers. Imposing a no-fly zone over Venezuela could require significant resources and planning, depending on the goals of the airspace closure, he said.

“The devil’s in the details,” Deptula said.

The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. The socialist Venezuelan president has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.

Reuters has reported that options under U.S. consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro, and that the U.S. military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela’s coast. Trump has also authorized covert CIA operations in the South American country.

Maduro, in power since 2013, has contended that Trump is seeking to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt.

Trump told military service members earlier this week that the U.S. would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.

The streets of Caracas were largely quiet on Saturday morning, though some people braved rain to go shopping.

Maduro and high-ranking officials in his government, some combination of whom appear almost daily on state television, have decried U.S. imperialism in their recent comments, but do not single out Trump by name, as the Venezuelan government may be trying to de-escalate tensions, according to security and diplomatic sources. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously been the focus of Venezuelan government ire, but even references to him have decreased in recent weeks.

The U.S. boat bombings have led to stepped-up surveillance by authorities in the remote northeastern state of Sucre, with increased patrols by security agencies and ruling-party supporters stoking fear among locals, four residents and one recent visitor said.

GPS signals in Venezuela have also been affected in recent weeks amid the U.S. buildup.

Trump’s announcement on Venezuela’s airspace followed a warning last week from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration that major airlines faced a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela due to a “worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around” the country.

Venezuela revoked operating rights for six major international airlines that had suspended flights to the country after the FAA warning.

Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru, Lucia Mutikani in Washington and Idrees Ali; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Sergio Non and Alexander Smith

Opposition leader detained in #Azerbaijan’s continuing crackdown on dissent.


Azerbaijani authorities detained opposition leader Ali Karimli on Saturday, his adviser said, marking the latest escalation in the country’s crackdown on dissent.

Karimli, chairman of the opposition Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan, was not receiving phone calls and his home had been searched, adviser Fuad Gahramanli wrote on Facebook. Party board member Mammad Ibrahim was also detained and his residence searched.

Authorities provided no official information about the detentions. Government-aligned media reported the moves were connected to a criminal investigation into Ramiz Mehdiyev, the former head of the presidential administration who was reportedly charged in October with attempting to seize state power, high treason and money laundering. He is under house arrest, though authorities have not confirmed the charges.

Azerbaijan has intensified its crackdown on dissent and freedom of speech, targeting journalists, activists and independent politicians, according to human rights organizations.

President Ilham Aliyev has ruled the oil-rich Caspian nation of around 10 million people since 2003, when he succeeded his father, Haidar. Both leaders suppressed opposition, and elections since Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union in the 1990s have not been considered fully free or fair by international observers.

The Associated Press