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

Son of jailed Mexican crime lord ‘El Chapo’ to plead guilty in drug case. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the four sons of the jailed Sinaloa cartel leader, originally pleaded not guilty after his July 2024 arrest in Texas. But he is to change his plea at a hearing set for Monday at US District Court in Chicago.

Another of his three brothers, Ovidio Guzman -- as part of a plea deal struck in exchange for a reduced sentence -- pleaded guilty in July 2025 to conspiracy related to drug trafficking and two counts of participating in the activities of a criminal enterprise.

Ovidio Guzman also admitted that he and his brothers, known as “Los Chapitos,” had taken over their father’s operations within the cartel.

The 68-year-old “El Chapo” is serving a life sentence at a supermax federal prison in Colorado following his 2016 arrest and 2019 conviction.

In July 2024, Joaquin Guzman Lopez pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering, and weapons possession.

He was taken into custody that month when he arrived in Texas aboard a small private plane, along with the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael “Mayo” Zambada.

Zambada claimed to have been misled about the destination and abducted by Guzman Lopez to be handed over against his will to the United States.

Following the arrest, clashes intensified between two factions of the cartel headed respectively by the Guzman brothers and Zambada.

The infighting led to approximately 1,200 deaths in Mexico and around 1,400 disappearances, according to official figures.

Washington accuses the Sinaloa cartel of trafficking fentanyl to the United States, where the synthetic drug has caused tens of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years, straining relations with Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel is one of six Mexican drug-trafficking groups that U.S. President Donald Trump has designated as global terrorist organizations.

In its aggressive policy against drug cartels, the Trump administration announced additional sanctions against “Los Chapitos” in June for fentanyl trafficking and increased the reward to US$10 million for each of the fugitive brothers.

The two other “Chapitos” -- Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar -- have also been indicted on drug trafficking charges in the United States but remain at large.

The tiring task of repairing Gaza’s tattered banknotes. With a pot of glue, a blade and a keen eye, Manal al-Saadani repairs tattered banknotes -- a necessity in the Gaza Strip, where the cash in circulation is wearing out.

For every revived note she gives back to a customer, they give her a few coins in return.

As Gaza remained blockaded for much of the Israel-Hamas war since October 2023, basic supplies were depleted, including banknotes, with no new ones supplied to its banks.

Every day, Saadani carries her small plastic table a few kilometres from Al-Bureij refugee camp and sets it up in the market in Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

A string of people come to Saadani’s table, showing her the flaws in their Israeli shekel notes.

“I decided to work and started repairing banknotes,” she told AFP, explaining it is her only source of income.

“Because I’m a woman... most people on the street stood by me and supported me. They would bring me 20-shekel notes and tell me: ‘We want you to repair this for one or two shekels.’ Which I accepted, and thank God for that.”

Working on a thick sheet of glass, she uses the blade from a utility knife to work the glue into the paper and smooths it out on the surface with her fingertips.

Saadani holds the notes up to the light, studying the damage and examining her handiwork.

But she wishes she was at home with her daughters instead.

“Look at me with compassion and mercy and understand me as a Palestinian mother,” she said, her voice straining with emotion.

“I am very tired.”
Cash crisis

The #Israeli new shekel is used throughout the Palestinian territories. One shekel is worth US$0.30.

The Bank of Israel’s first Series C notes entered circulation in 2014. They feature the portraits of prominent Hebrew poets, with the 20 note in red, the 50 in green, the 100 in orange and the 200 in blue.

Saadani rubs colours back into the notes to refresh their appearance.

“Go and buy some biscuits with it,” she said, handing back a customer two 20-shekel notes.

Nabila Shenar, one of Saadani’s customers, explained how tattered banknotes make life difficult.

“Most of the money is damaged,” she told AFP.

“If we try to use this money to buy anything from any grocery store, they tell us it’s damaged and unusable.

“Therefore, we’ve had to go to people who repair money for two shekels for 20-shekel notes and three shekels for 50-shekel notes.

“They need to find a solution to this problem and provide us with money so we can live our lives and buy what we need, but because of these damaged banknotes we can’t buy anything.”

Global measles cases drop 71% in 24 years as vaccination coverage improves, WHO says.


Global measles cases fell 71 per cent to 11 million from the year 2000 to 2024, driven by improved vaccination coverage, the World Health Organization said in a report on Friday.

Vaccination has prevented nearly 59 million deaths globally during this period, according to the report.

Deaths dropped even more sharply by 88 per cent to 95,000 in 2024, among the lowest annual tolls since 2000.

However, estimated cases in 2024 rose 8 per cent, while deaths dropped 11 per cent, compared with 2019 pre-pandemic levels, reflecting a shift in disease burden from low-income to middle-income countries, which have lower fatality ratios, the report said.

Measles is often the first disease to see a resurgence when vaccination coverage drops, the agency said, adding that growing measles outbreaks expose weaknesses in immunization programs and health systems.

Due to its high transmissibility, “even small drops in vaccine coverage can trigger outbreaks, like a fire alarm going off when smoke is detected,” said Kate O’Brien, director of the Department of Immunization at WHO.

Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore, Reuters

#Russia convicts and hands life sentences to 8 people over attack on a key bridge to #Crimea.


A court in Russia on Thursday convicted eight people on terrorism charges over an attack on a bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea that is a key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine.

The court sentenced all of the defendants to life in prison.

The October 2022 attack on the bridge came when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repairs. The blast killed the truck driver and four other people in a car nearby. Moscow decried the attack as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, targeting the country’s power grid over the winter.

The Ukrainian Security Service, known as the SBU, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Eight people including Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian citizens were arrested. Five others, including three Ukrainian and two Georgian nationals, were charged in absentia.

Artyom and Georgy Azatyan, Oleg Antipov, Alexander Bylin, Vladimir Zloba, Dmitry Tyazhelykh, Roman Solomko and Artur Terchanyan were charged with carrying out a terrorist attack and illegal arms trafficking. Solomko and Terchanyan also were accused of smuggling explosives.

The Russian authorities accused them of aiding Ukraine in organizing the attack. All of those arrested have denied the charges and insisted they didn’t know the truck carried explosives, according to Russian media reports.

Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the SBU, said in a 2023 interview that he and two other “trusted staff members” prepared the attack and used other people without their knowledge.

A military court in Russia’s southern city Rostov-on-Don about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of the border with Ukraine began trying the accused in February 2025 behind closed doors. The Russian authorities have accused Maliuk of organizing the attack.

Antipov, an entrepreneur whose logistics company handled the shipment of the cargo in the truck that exploded, went to Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, as soon as he heard about the blast and failed to reach the driver of the car.

He hoped to assist the investigation, he and his wife Irina told the Mediazona independent news site. Security officials initially let him go, but days later he was arrested.

A video published by Mediazona showed Antipov addressing the courtroom after the verdict and insisting, “We are innocent. We are innocent.”

“We all passed — eight of us — we all passed the polygraphs. We all proved our innocence. We cooperated fully. We went to law enforcement ourselves and gave our testimony. Not a single person has testified against us," Antipov said from a glass cage in the courtroom, where he stood alongside other defendants. “All the witnesses say we are innocent. All the evidence says we are innocent. All 116 volumes (of case files) say we are innocent. Show the people the truth.”

The bridge connecting Crimea and Russia carries heavy significance for Moscow, both logistically and psychologically, as a key artery for military and civilian supplies and as an assertion of Kremlin control of the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine attacked the bridge twice — in October 2022 with a truck bomb and in July 2023 with sea drones. The second attack killed two people.

The 19-kilometre (12-mile) bridge over the Kerch Strait that links the Black and Azov seas carries road and rail traffic on separate sections and is vital to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

The bridge is the longest in Europe and a subject of considerable pride in Russia. Construction began in 2016, about two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and was completed in little more than two years.

The bridge was built despite strong objections from Ukraine and is the most visible and constant reminder of Russia’s claim over Crimea.

The Associated Press